The Michigan Messenger

Presumptive Democratic nominee for president Barack Obama has announced he will not accept public funding for his bid for the Oval Office. In an e-mail to supporters and a video on his Web site (see the Video: Important Announcement from Barack), Obama said he was refusing to take the public money because “the system is broken.”

The decision means that Obama will forgo a lump-sum payment from the U.S. Treasury of $84.1 million, but it also removes any limitations on raising money that accepting the federal funds would have put on his campaign. In February and March alone, Obama raised $95 million, and most of that was raised in donations of less than $100.

The campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican presumptive nominee for president, immediately accused the Obama campaign of breaking its promise on federal financing.

A senior adviser to the McCain campaign, Charlie Black, told the New York Times “Mr. Obama has ‘broken his word.’”

A McCain campaign spokesperson was more carefully measured in her response to the news.

“The true test of a candidate for president is whether he will stand on principle and keep his word to the American people. Barack Obama has failed that test today, and his reversal of his promise to participate in the public finance system undermines his call for a new type of politics,” Jill Hazelbaker, communications director for the McCain campaign, told reporters in an afternoon conference call. “This decision will have far-reaching and extraordinary consequences that will weaken and undermine the public financing system.”

Obama had said he would accept federal funding in a candidate survey, but he added: “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”

Obama and McCain campaign lawyers attempted to negotiate an agreement on financing, but called the talks off as unfruitful. Obama wanted McCain to put sharp controls on spending from the Republican National Committee as well as so-called 527 groups if they both accepted the federal funds. The 527 groups are unregulated groups that are independent of presidential campaigns. Under the rules, there are no restrictions on how much anyone can give to such a group, nor are the groups required to report who gave money to them. The groups rose to prominence in the 2004 presidential cycle when Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran a series of national advertisements questioning Sen. John Kerry’s heroism in Vietnam.