Presidential Campaign Spending

The 2008 presidential candidates raised a combined half a billion dollars in 2007. I believe that with our country bordering a recession, millions of dollars should not be wasted on campaigning, but actually doing something.

Each candidate wants to address health care and how they can each fix it and how they care about people who can’t afford health insurance and how they want to make sure all children are insured. Each time I see a commercial with one candidate attacking another candidate, I think of how many sick children in the United States could have received medical care with what that advertisement cost to make and air. Last year Mitt Romney spent over $10.2 million dollars on television advertising, only to step aside this year from the race, where as John McCain spent $300,000 in television advertisements as of November 2007 and is the republican front runner now. According to TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, Mitt Romney was spending an average of $600,000 a week on campaign commercials. As of November 2007, Obahma spent $3.9 million on campaign commercials and Clinton spent $2.2 million. Between the 4 candidates, that is a combined amount of $16.6 million dollars spent on commercials alone. Through projects like Feed Just One, that money could have bought 415 million meals for starving children. Did it change my mind as far as who I am voting for? No it did not.

How the spending last year could have paid for approximately 10,000 people who otherwise can not afford to attend college at 4 year universities. When it comes down to who wins, I really don’t believe it has anything to do with who raises more money. It has to do with who is the stronger candidate.