2008 boosted Obama into the position of the most successful presidential fundraiser ever, in addition to the Democratic nominee. From the start he's had no problem bringing in the money or appealing to new donors, and has relied on small online donors and bigger donors nearly equally. After becoming the nominee, he opted out of the public financing system, making him the first major-party candidate since the system was created to decline taxpayers' money for the general election. Cash on Hand: $65,762,929
Debts: $2,302,457
Date of last report: Oct 15 2008 12:00AM
Totals may include compliance fund receipts.
 |
Individual contributions |
$579,178,033 |
91% |
 |
PAC contributions |
$1,280 |
0% |
 |
Candidate self-financing |
$0 |
0% |
 |
Federal Funds |
$0 |
0% |
 |
Other |
$59,994,968 |
9% |
How complete are this candidate's campaign finance reports?
| Full Disclosure |
$330,536,978 |
(90.7%) |
|
Incomplete |
$10,784,060 |
(3.0%) |
 |
No Disclosure |
$22,981,190 |
(6.3%) |
NOTE: All the numbers on this page are for the 2008 election cycle. Summary and Fundraising by Quarter numbers are based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on September 20, 2008. All other numbers are based on data released electronically on Monday, October 27, 2008.
Michelle Obama Speaks Out
Speaking at a campaign event in Haverford, Pa, in April of this year, Michelle Obama claimed that her husband had “just paid off his loan debt” for his Harvard Law School education.
In an appearance in Zanesville, Ohio, in February she bemoaned the fact that many American families were strapped with student loan payments for years after graduation.
“The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books,” she said. The first of those best-sellers netted the couple $1.2 million in royalties in 2005.
In response to Newsmax questions about the Obama’s college loans, a campaign spokesman cited a report in The Chicago Sun claiming that Obama borrowed $42,753 to pay for Harvard Law School, and “tens of thousands” more to pay for undergraduate studies at Columbia.
The same report said that Michelle Obama borrowed $40,762 to pay for her years at Harvard Law School.
But a Newsmax review of Senator Obama’s financial disclosures found no trace of any outstanding college loans, going back to 2000.
As a United States Senate candidate, Barack Obama was required to file a financial disclosure form in 2004 detailing his assets, income, consulting contracts, and liabilities.
Obama listed “zero” under liabilities in 2004 and in all subsequent U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms.
Under the Senate ethics rules, he is required to disclose any loan, including credit card debt, of $10,000 or more. The only exception to the reporting requirement is mortgage debt on a principal residence.
The Senate reports also directly contradict Michelle Obama’s claim that the couple had “only just” paid off their student loans after receiving book royalties paid out in 2005 and 2006 – well after her husband had been ensconced in the Senate.
Apparently, Michelle Obama misspoke, according to the version provided by the Obama campaign.
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt now tells Newsmax that the loans Sen. Obama took out to pay for Harvard Law School “were repaid in full while he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate [in 2004], and under the rules, the modest outstanding balance he repaid was not reportable as a liability on his personal financial disclosure reports.”
The Senator repaid the loans on “the expectation of a significant increase in family income” as a result of the paperback edition of his 1995 book, Dreams of My Father, LaBolt said.
Obama acknowledges that sales of the hard cover edition of the book were “underwhelming.” But in the spring of 2004,when Obama won the Democrat U.S. Senate primary in Illinois, Rachel Klayman, an editor at Crown Publishers in New York, read an article about Obama and became interested in his memoir, only to discover that Crown now owned the rights.
She asked Obama to write a new forward, and Crown then decided to re-issue Dreams as a paperback in July 2004, just as Obama made his historic speech to the Democrat National Convention.
The paperback eventually sold over one million copies, which under the standard industry royalty for trade paperbacks of 7.5%, earned him $1.2 million. However, Obama didn’t report income from the book until 2005, so it’s unclear how he was able to repay his student loans in 2004.
Responding to attacks from the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primaries, Obama released seven years of tax returns on March 25 of this year.
The returns, dating back to 2000, indicate that the couple paid no interest on their student loans. The interest from such loans would have been deductible on their joint income tax returns.
For 2000 through 2004, taxpayers declared student loan interest as a deduction on line 24 of federal form 1040. After 2004, the deduction can be taken on Line 33.
But the Obamas never declared a dime of interest in student loans on their return, most likely because they simply earned too much money to be able to take the deduction under the IRS rules.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt had no answer as to why the Obamas’ failed to declare the loans, stating the obvious that “because interest on the loans was not deducted, it would not appear on the Obamas’ personal return.”