Ron Paul's painstaking campaign finance reports list numerous expenses of less than a dollar

If his campaign expense reports are any indication, someone in the Obama administration should have put Ron Paul in charge of the $787 billion stimulus program.

The presidential candidate from Texas declares absolutely everything, ProPublica is reporting today with the kind of wide-eyed astonishment that can only come from covering the usual four flushers and scalawags in Washington D.C.

In its review of the spending of all of the candidates, $306 million in all through February, ProPublica found a general forthrightness and honesty. The Federal Election Commission requires candidates to report individual purchases of $200 or more.

With Paul they found 160 purchases of a dollar or less, 99 cents spent at a Conoco gas station, 22 cents at a FedEx. The $1.27 staffer meals, the $1.09 for office equipment at Dollar Tree, the $1 for event supplies at the Salvation Army chart a campaign that is awfully tight with a buck.

Paul evidently requires the same frugality and transparency from the political action committees supporting him. Endorse Liberty, ProPublica says, files all of its expenses within 48 hours of incurring them, including the 8 cents it reported shelling out for online advertising to Google.

“We take the trust our donors place in us very seriously and are deeply committed to transparency and accuracy in our reporting,” Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign manager told ProPublica in an e-mail.

We are pretty sure the guy who takes his campaign funding this seriously, who thought having his own Secret Service detail was a form of welfare, would have passed on that stimulus job.

That no vote back in 2009 wouldn’t have helped.

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Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

Photo of Dollar Tree by flickr user kevynjacobs, used via a Creative Commons license.

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