How do politicians access campaign contributions for personal use?
According to campaign watchdogs, politicians created a loophole big enough to fly the old space shuttle through. While they still aren’t allowed to use leftover cash directly for their personal use, they can use the money to set up political action committees for other candidates and other causes. Many of these are called “leadership PACs,” and what the organizers do with the money going to these groups apparently is pretty much unregulated.
“It’s a political slush fund,” Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, told “60 Minutes” in 2013. “Over time, we’ve had them. They’ve been outlawed. They spring back in new guises, and this is the latest guise. Since they weren’t around when the ban on personal use was put into place, they’re not covered by it. They can be used for literally anything.”
In 2010, for example, the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., looked at the campaign coffers of 25 U.S. senators and representatives who were retiring and had $31 million in cash on hand. Of those, 18 had set up leadership PACs bulging with a combined $850,000. Former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, for example, set up the All America PAC with $439,000 while New Hampshire’s Judd Gregg had stuffed $72,722 into his White Mountain PAC.
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