$1 billion in presidential campaign funds

Food for thought.

According to OpenSecrets.org, 2008 presidential candidates raised more than $1 billion for their campaigns.

With that money, clean drinking water could have been provided to 200,000,000 (200 million) people.  30,000 people, mostly young children, died from the results of unclean drinking water today alone.

At $35 for a four-week life-saving treatment of Plumpy’Nut, nearly 29,000,000 (29 million) African children could have been saved from starvation.

With $1 billion, more than 1,300,000 (1.3 million) young Thai girls could have been educated for one year, safeguarding them and preventing underage prostitution and sexual trafficking.

Instead, Barack Obama spent $573 million on T-shirts, flyers, television and radio advertisements, rallies and a half-hour prime-time television special.

John McCain spent $293 million in a similar fashion.

There must be a better way.

Sources:
Presidential fund-raising: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php
Plumpy’Nut: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy_nut
Drinking water cost: http://www.thirstrelief.org/facts.htm
Thailand Prostitution: http://www.depdc.org/eng/help/how.html
*Please note: this is not an endorsement of these particular charities, simply examples of probable costs.

Comments

Yeah, and if Gore had won in 2000, we would have a trillion extra dollars for all those things (cost of Iraq war), so a billion dollars really is nothing. Additionally if we would pare down our military spending from the 500 billion a year we spend currently (that doesn’t include bonus “emergency” off the books spending on the TWO wars were currently in) and simple made it proportional to the EUs (which has a higher GDP as well as a greater population, and is geographically closer to any credible enemies) we could save an extra 200 billion anually. So yeah, spending a billion dollars to send the candidate that is a little less jingoistic could save us a lot money. The United states is quite capable of doing immense good in the world, alas we would rather train a million people to kill or support killing and arm them to the teeth than pay a million people to go out in the world and help others. Every time you vote for the guy who is good on “defense” you are really voting for the guy whos enthusiastic about wasting money on toys whose primary purpose is to kill and destroy the work of others.

Good points N-dawg.

But surely it would be shortsighted to speak exclusively of surplus spending on national defense and ignore wasted and excess funds for everything from failing schools and social welfare programs to market bailouts and the war on drugs.

But I think that we can all agree that $1 billion on nothing but bi-directional negativity is particularly purposeless and particularly relevant on this November 5.

There will be no hijacking of this post for the purpose of partisan politics today! 

1) The military IS the LARGEST discretionary spending program of the federal government.
2) It is AT LEAST 40% waste, since the EU can spend 40 percent less and still be as safe. (lets not mention china, geographically as large, has 3 times as many people, shares boarders with unstable states, and yet spends approximately 10% as much)

I was not being negative, i just don’t think curtailing speech is the answer, when the alternative is so glaringly obvious.

Noah, there’ll be no Firestoning around here sir.

If you’d like to write an article on discretionary spending vs. humanitarian aide, I’d be happy to publish it, along with your sources.

This post, however, is about American priorities and personal responsibility.  It would be great if we could spend federal funds differently, but that’s not really relevant to the present discourse.

The difference in the instance of the presidential campaign is that citizens made a voluntary choice to give their money directly to these candidates for these specific purposes.  We’re obligated to pay taxes, and therefore the same responsibility doesn’t apply.