On Thursday, Barrack Obama decided that he was NOT going to accept public funds for his presidential bid making him the first presidential candidate to EVER turn down this money since the system was created in 1976. To shed light on this, each candidate stands to receive public funds equaling $84 million dollars. Where does this money come from? It's raised by people who check the box to give three dollars to presidential election on their tax returns.
Now, you may be wondering why Obama would turn down this type of cash. Here are two major reasons:
1. There is a spending limit that comes with the acceptance of public funds.
2. There are also restrictions on the amount of money candidates can receive from special interest groups.
According to a New York Times article on Friday, June 20th, 47% of the $263 million dollars that Obama has already received has come in amounts of $200 dollars or less. Most of this money has been raised through online or internet campaigning.
Also, according to the Washington Post, by the end of April, he had already raised $272 million dollars to McCain's $122 million by the end of May. Obama has outpaced his competition almost 2-to-1, which explains why McCain today said he will likely take the money.
In short, Obama is a fund-raising ATM machine. He is reinventing the way candidates are raising money for the general election.
1. I think that what Barack Obama is trying to accomplish is formidable. In as far as he sticks to his promise of not accepting public funding, he can now find out where the public's monies are being used. The only ominous portion to this is that the powers that be don't him to find out all the dirty little secrets that have been kept from Black Americans for years in a very surreptitious fashion. These are the things that we have accepted without question for too many years.
Maurice Miller at 6:11PM on Jun 20th 2008