Obama Looking to Become First Presidential Candidate to Ever Raise $1 Billion



Over the past few weeks, we've been inundated with stories regarding spending cuts, budget deals and debt ceilings.

The country's expenditures are far higher than its revenues at this point in time, which has led to trillion dollar deficits and a rapidly expanding national debt load.

With the battle over the nation's debt ceiling looming on the horizon, everybody is thinking of ways to cut spending and get the nation's finances in order.

President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign is looking to go in the opposite direction. Obama wants money, and he wants as much of it as possible.

According to multiple media outlets, President Obama has a good chance of becoming the first US Presidential candidate to ever raise $1 billion for his election campaign.

This would be a marked increase over the record $744 million that Obama was able to raise in the 2008 Presidential race. John McCain, on the other hand, raised a little over $368 million. Source: Opensecrets.org

In the run-up to the 2008 election, Obama's team spend an incredible $427 million on media buys. Of this total, $244 million was spent on broadcast media, while $47 million was spent on print and online media. You can expect all of these numbers to rise substantially in the 2012 campaign, which means that you will be seeing even more of President Obama on your TVs, computer screens and newspapers.

President Obama officially launched his 2012 re-election campaign last week. Obama's fund-raising efforts will officially kick off later tonight (Thursday), as he will be speaking at a $5,000 to $15,000-per-plate fundraiser and eating at a $35,800 per-person dinner a short while later.

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Some estimates peg the estimated total amount of spending for the various 2012 elections (House, Senate, President) at a whopping $8 billion.

The country may be getting ready to go into full-blown austerity mode in order to tame its deficit spending, but you can expect that election campaign spending will hit new highs in 2012.

Filed under: General Knowledge

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