Individual Use of Independent Expenditures
An individual could not use independent expenditures on his own campaign. However, individuals, like an existing elected official, could form a Leadership PAC. This type of PAC allowed unlimited spending on like minded individuals and ballot measures provided it was an independent expenditure. Leadership PAC.
While funds could not be spent on their own campaigns, individuals that controlled a PAC were allowed to subtract expenses to pay normal administrative expenses. When lampooning spending of this nature, Stephen Colbert claimed normal expenses included luxury hotel stays, private jet travel, and PAC mementos from Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus."
Read more about this topic: Independent Expenditure
Famous quotes containing the words individual and/or independent:
“[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)