Obama Introducing Bill to Require Reports On Bundlers
Barack Obama is proposing a new bill to require campaigns to track and report the activities of bundlers. From his Senate office's press release:
Obama’s bill will require candidates for Congress to disclose all of the people who gather contributions from others in excess of $15,000 in any six month period and require presidential candidates to disclose people who gather contributions of others in excess of $50,000 anytime during the two-year period prior to Election Day.Senator Obama fought for and won a provision in the Senate ethics reform bill that requires campaigns to disclose campaign contributions solicited by lobbyists from their friends and colleagues – a practice known as bundling. Obama’s bill introduced today will go further by requiring the disclosure of all the wealthy and connected contributors who play a critical role in campaigns by bundling contributions from their friends and associates.
Ben Smith suspects this could be "an oblique Hsu shot" against Hillary Clinton. But it could just as easily be damage control. Remember, Obama got money from Hsu, too, and also had to give it away to charity in an embarrassing campaign moment.
Comments (20)
goethean wrote on September 6, 2007 7:11 PM:Those darn good government types...
mopper wrote on September 6, 2007 7:15 PM:It seems right in line with his campaign proposals and previous legislation on the matter, not to mention his campaign practices, where he's been praised for his bundler disclosure.
js wrote on September 6, 2007 7:17 PM:Desperate times call for desperate measure. Barack, is this the best you can do? Fire those 150 advisers first before introducing this bill.
Dave wrote on September 6, 2007 7:24 PM:"js wrote on September 6, 2007 7:17 PM:
Desperate times call for desperate measure. Barack, is this the best you can do? Fire those 150 advisers first before introducing this bill."
Maybe if they spent less time commenting on all these blog posts they could do something.
Anonymous wrote on September 6, 2007 7:34 PM:"js wrote on September 6, 2007 7:17 PM:
Desperate times call for desperate measure. Barack, is this the best you can do? Fire those 150 advisers first before introducing this bill. "
Why? Worried what it might show about your girl?
Ben Smith suspects this could be "an oblique Hsu shot" against Hillary Clinton. But it could just as easily be damage control.
It could also be, you know, a good idea for a bill.
mopper wrote on September 6, 2007 7:39 PM:Obama's critics have apparently resorted to demogogy and baseless ad hominem attacks.
Always a sign of strong footing in your arguments.
js wrote on September 6, 2007 7:40 PM:Anonymous:
who is my girl?
mopper wrote on September 6, 2007 8:00 PM:It could also be, you know, a good idea for a bill.
No, don't you get it? Everything is about Hillary, always, even when it's at-best obliquely about Hillary, or even when, well, it's plainly not about Hillary at all.
Duh.
bob wrote on September 6, 2007 8:03 PM:Maybe I'm missing something here, but presumably more due diligence is required of a $100,000+ bundler (Hsu for Hillary) than a $6000 donor to someone's PAC (Hsu for Obama).
No?
hadenough wrote on September 6, 2007 8:22 PM:"mopper wrote on September 6, 2007 7:15 PM:
It seems right in line with his campaign proposals and previous legislation on the matter, not to mention his campaign practices, where he's been praised for his bundler disclosure."
"he's been praised for his bundler disclosure"
I'd guess you praising obama for his bundler disclosure means that yes he has been praised. Of course obama could eat a baby on live teevee and you'd praise him. Some reality:
As Public Citizen’s letters point out, however, none of the 2008 Democratic candidates is living up to the disclosure standards that George Bush, Howard Dean and John Kerry set in 2004. The Republican frontrunners have been even less forthcoming.
“The presidential hopefuls should put their mouths where their money is,” said Laura MacCleery, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “The candidates should lift the veil that is keeping details of their bundling operations secret.”
Public Citizen’s letters ask each candidate to take three simple steps to shed light on bundling:
Disclose their bundlers’ identities (including their cities and states of residence and the names of their employers) in a place on their campaign Web sites that will be easy for the public to find;
Disclose the amounts raised by each bundler using $50,000 increments or some similar threshold and promptly update such information each time a bundler’s fundraising exceeds the reported threshold;
and
Disclose the identities of individuals from whom the bundlers raise money and the amounts they contributed.
Only two candidates (Obama and Clinton) provide any information about the amounts of money their bundlers have raised. A majority of the candidates have yet to list bundlers on their Web sites, and all the candidates are failing to disclose who their bundlers raised money from.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2495
Praising obama for disclosing less than bush or Kerry did is desperation at best. But that's where they are.
CalD wrote on September 6, 2007 9:02 PM:This could be aimed squarely at John Edwards. According to whitehouseforsale.org, Edwards has received bundled contributions from more sources than than Obama and Clinton combined. They have also identified more bundlers for Obama than Clinton, although Clinton has a few more lobbyist bundlers than Obama and Edwards has just one of those. Anyway, whatever his reasons are, I approve of the action.
corinne wrote on September 6, 2007 9:16 PM:Hey, any of you Obamabots want to give your candidate a poke and remind him that there's some Iraq withdrawal legislation going around. That's a tad more important right now than who's bundling contributions to you and other candidates.
Richard L. Adlof wrote on September 6, 2007 9:53 PM:I do not care why the bill is being introduced. I do not care who introduced it. It is a good idea.
Now if we could just get a law-maker to apply the same sorta transparency to electronic voting machine system operations and demand that the major flaws in H.R. 811 be fixed.
RaymondA wrote on September 6, 2007 10:34 PM:To those of you denigrating the legislation Obama has introduced, please identify one bill of substance Hillary has gotten enacted -- or even introduced -- in her US Senate career, which her people like to remind us is four years longer than Obama's. Obama has co-sponsored loose nukes legislation and other ethics reform legislation beside the bill introduced today.
Matt in Costa Rica wrote on September 7, 2007 1:31 AM:You know what Obama, I would prefer to see you spend your time introducing a bill requiring immediate US withdrawal, redeployment (or whatever the Hell you want to call it) from Iraq. At this point in time, little else matters. AND filibuster any war funding bill which doesn't require immediate US withdrawal. If you don't have the balls or interest to do that, then just pack up and let Clinton reel in her nomination.
oleeb wrote on September 7, 2007 2:06 AM:I honestly don't understand why people get all hot and bothered by the practice of bundling unless the practice is actually a means of funnelling illegal contributions, but I haven't really heard that sort of criticism of it. What I hear and read on it always seems to imply that it's a bad thing but there's not much specific about why this partciular practice, which has been going on for a long, long time, is so odious. Personally, I think all these attempts at reporting everything that takes place are little more than half measures. The only real and true reform of campaigning and preventing the undue influence of special interests, but most specifically corporate interests is a system of 100% public financing of campaigns. Until that comes about all this finger pointing and demands for faux openness really don't mean much.
Federal campaign finance has become more and more absurd since the post-Watergate reforms were first implemented. Every "reform" leads to new forms of abuse and it is simply endless. More importantly, I don't think the endless reform efforts have really done much good beyond making it much clearer who is writing the checks--at least officially.
Public financing is really the only answer and for me, the only topic I want to hear about when it comes to campaign finance reform and/or contributions. All the rest is just fluff regardless of whose proposal or initiative it might be and whether or not the person proposing it has good intentions. We need more than good intentions at reforming an essentially corrupt system. Publicly financed campaigns is the only real solution.
Daniel wrote on September 7, 2007 2:40 AM:Hours after Quinnipiac's Ohio poll, a new Keystone poll from Pennsylvania confirms that Democrats are doing great right now. But it also demonstrates how impossible it is to draw conclusions about electability. Obama and Clinton are winning all 8 matchups against the top 4 Republican candidates. Read more at Campaign Diaries.
NCSteve wrote on September 7, 2007 9:49 AM:Corinne:
Lamest. Attack. Ever.
Right, he must cease all other legislative activity so that he can engage in unspecified activities regarding Iraq bills. What exactly is it that he's supposed to be doing with regard to this "Iraq withdrawl legisltation that's going around" that his introduction of this bill interferes with? And, more to the point, what, exactly is it that Hillary's been doing about this legislation that Obama hasn't/isn't?
You go into "Obama does something that makes him look good must fire off attack" mode and imply that Obama's supporters are robots?
Waste Management wrote on September 7, 2007 11:31 AM:Another "embarrassing campaign moment" from TPMElectionClinton and its resident HillaryLiebertool.
What next?
More "humiliating episodes" for Obama, Edwards, et al. when "the media" finally reports the "extraordinary" number of felons on Hillary's payroll/donor rolls?
