Recently in Campaign Finance Category

The SEIU, which represents workers in the service industries, today announced it will spend $85 million this year -- about $42 per union member -- to help elect Barack Obama and pro-labor members of Congress. That's $20 million more than the union spent four years ago and $1 million more than John McCain will get from the federal government to run his fall campaign. And the money is only the beginning.

John McCain may be in dire need of help this spring and summer -- and he'll need it from the deep-pocketed friends and supporters who take a pretty dim view of his advocacy for campaign reform.

This is McCain's fix, as fine a Catch-22 as can be found in government and politics: Because of a complicated loan that he took out when his campaign was in tatters, McCain has been told he needs permission from the Federal Election Commission to withdraw from the public campaign finance program. Otherwise, he'll be handcuffed until September by severe spending limits. But McCain can't get that permission because the FEC lacks a quorum.

It was only a three-paragraph statement by a head of an industry trade group and it could easily have gone unnoticed. But this was a challenge to The Way Things Are Done. Unhappy that the just-passed economic stimulus plan did not do not do more to help the struggling housing industry, the president of the National Association of Home Builders let it be known that NAHB's political action committee would halt contributions to congressional campaigns "until further notice."