Today we're filing a complaint with the FEC against John McCain's campaign. In the complaint, we ask them to investigate whether the McCain campaign is about to violate the spending limit law he agreed to when he became eligible to receive matching funds.
I've embedded the document below, or you can download here.
We've heard a lot recently about Senator McCain's lack of ethics. Maybe it has to do with having a campaign that's run so heavily by Washington lobbyists, but it has now extended beyond his Senate conduct and into his campaign.
The press release we issued a few days ago expresses pretty nicely how this scheme by McCain's campaign worked:
In order to receive matching funds, John McCain signed a binding agreement with the FEC to accept spending limits and to abide by the conditions of receiving those funds. The FEC makes clear that any request to withdraw from the agreement must be granted by the FEC. In other words, McCain can't just unilaterally withdraw. FEC Chairman David Mason made this clear in a letter to McCain advising him that the law requires the FEC to approve his request to withdraw from his contract.
According to past Commission rulings, the McCain campaign would not be allowed to withdraw from matching funds because it has already violated a key condition for being let out of the program - pledging matching funds as collateral for a private loan. McCain obtained a $4 million line of credit -- drew $2,971,697 from it - and documents make clear that the promise of public financing was used to secure his loan.
More than this, his campaign also got free ballot access, worth millions of dollars, because of his public financing. But now -- after he's received all this financial help -- he wants to unilaterally withdraw from the program.
This is about more than spending limits and the FEC; this is a question of integrity.
He wanted to bring up obligations to participate in public financing and had no intention of doing so himself. Thank god our party is attacking the inconsistancies in rhetoric this time around.
Posted by Cubilist on February 25, 2008 at 12:53 PM
Cubilist has a point. If we had been more assertive, and held the Republicans' noses to the grindstone, the last time around, maybe we wouldn't have had 4 more years of Bush malfeasance to endure.
I heard that dean himself has done the same thing as McCain, is he filing a frivelous law suit?
Posted by connfloyd on February 25, 2008 at 01:39 PM
Dr. Dean, has screwed up this election, by stacking the deck for Obama, and now Obama is going down, with his RESKO connection and we haven't even looked into the Sinclair thing. Dr. Dean you need to go back to being a physician, maybe you can't screw that up!!
Posted by connfloyd on February 25, 2008 at 01:43 PM
Posted by connfloyd on February 25, 2008 at 01:39 PM
Nope, that's the McCain spin, which is pretty blatently false.
Here's how our release put it:
"The McCain campaign has incorrectly stated that McCain is doing what Dean did when he withdrew from public financing in his presidential bid, but they have the facts wrong. Dean did not use the promise of matching funds as collateral for a loan. As required, Dean obtained permission from the Commission to withdraw from matching funds before any funds were disbursed. Also, Dean spent resources to get his name on the ballot after withdrawing, unlike McCain who had free ballot access in some states because he pledged to accept matching funds."
Posted by MichaelLink on February 25, 2008 at 02:05 PM
ahhh, don't mind this connfloyd person, Michael.
She does not know facts about anything, just likes to hear herself rant and rave.
Spot on, what Cubilist said, seconded by butte. We need to hold their feet to the fire and insist on clarity and truthfulness.
BTW, nice software [scribd], I just signed up and uploaded the wage floor excel ss that I had linked on my blog. Now it's embedded on my blog and it makes it much clearer to read and understand. Thanks!!
Posted by davidual on February 25, 2008 at 05:39 PM
Posted by davidual on February 25, 2008 at 05:39 PM
Hopefully you see my response to this... but glad you found it of use.
There are a few different websites competing on this front to embed documents, whether they be docs, pdfs, or whatever. I've tried different ones and haven't settled on a favorite yet.
But I heard this one was recently improved so I figured I'd give it a try.
Posted by MichaelLink on February 25, 2008 at 11:11 PM
