Checking the Facts: Obama’s Fannie and Freddie Payday
Last week, Sen. John McCain attempted to point out his opponent Sen. Barack Obama’s hypocrisy during the financial crisis by stating that Obama was the senator who got the second most amount of money from the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, behind Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd. Politifact checked into the situation, and labels McCain’s statement as “mostly true,” but not in the way you may think.
Many corporations gather up individual contributions from their employees and send them off to the campaigns in one big bundle. You’ll find many of the same names on both the contribution lists of John McCain and Barack Obama.
And that’s basically the jist of the Politifact article. Obama raised a lot of money from Fannie and Freddie, but via their employees. The numbers:
On the Freddie and Fannie question, it as McCain said: Obama is No. 2 on the list, with $126,349, right after Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who had $165,400.
But the list requires a few notes of explanation.
Corporations cannot give to candidates, so the center’s list adds up contributions from Fannie and Freddie employees and their families. Obama has received a lot of money during his presidential campaign, though, and Fannie and Freddie don’t make his list of top 20 companies. (The top three companies with employees donating to Obama are Goldman Sachs, University of California, and Citigroup, according to the center.)
Maybe McCain meant to say the Obama was in it with the fat cats of Fannie and Freddie, the directors and lobbyists? Hope not:
The New York Times looked at contributions from Fannie and Freddie’s boards of directors and lobbyists, who are technically not employees. That analysis found Fannie and Freddie-related contributors gave $116,000 to John McCain and his related committees, compared with $16,000 to Obama and his related committees.
Meanwhile, Obama had a former CEO of Fannie Mae, Jim Johnson, on his VP selection commitee until June 11, and McCain currently has a former Fannie and Freddie lobbyist on his transition committee.
Disagree with Arcane about the comment moderation, but I do agree that the ads make reading very difficult. It may be an IE thing, but after the ads pop up and you navigate back to the page, it won’t load properly (the screen shakes and then won’t scroll down.)
This is not entirely true. The Times is potentially the most liberal newspaper of our age. Read carefully the quote from their article: "$116,000 to John McCain and his related committees". If you notice they add "Related committees" which could be ANYTHING they want to make it, and I guarantee 116k is an arbitrary #. As the article above actually rightfully says OBAMA HIMSELF recieved more from Freddie and Fannie than anyone else & he’s only been a senator for 3 years! "The only person who has taken more is Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee" and he has been around for a LONG time.
Tara, did you even read my entry, or just key in on the dollar amount that Sen. Obama received from the employees of the two banks?
There is a definite chance that McCain may have only gotten a small portion of the donations from the directors and lobbyists and Obama more. Who knows? I was only providing information there.