Senate candidate Joe Miller finally filed his Senate financial disclosure information, seven months late, and now it might be apparent why he wasn't so anxious for the world to see his finances. Mr. Fiscal Conservative is in debt up to his eyeballs.
He owes himself between $100,001 and $250,000 for a campaign loan, according to the paperwork. Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission show that he loaned himself $103,920 for the campaign.
Miller also has a substantial amount of credit card debt, including between $35,003 and $80,000 on three separate charge accounts: two cards charging 10.24 percent interest with Bank of America and one zero percent interest loan with USAA Federal Savings Bank. He also owes student loans valued at $15,001 to $50,000. A federal judicial disclosure report released today by the federal courts from Millers’ time as a federal magistrate show that in 2004 he owed between $30,001 and $55,001 for his law school education.
Now a lot of people have a lot of personal debt, that's just life. But, to quote Mudflats, "if I were running on a platform of fiscal conservatism, and talking all the time about how the United States is being managed badly, and about how debt is going to kill our nation, and about how we need to get our financial house in order, the first thing I’d do before standing in front of the microphone and convincing people that I was the candidate for them – is get out of debt and get my fiscal house in order."
The other thing one might do if they were running on a platform of fiscal conservatism and declaring that all social programs are actually unconstitutional is decide whether those positions make sense given your own personal history. Like the fact that your wife took unemployment benefits or that, as was revealed yesterday, your family got help from Medicaid.
U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller acknowledged Thursday that in the past his family received assistance from federal Medicaid and Denali KidCare, the state low income health care program. His opponents in the race responded that he’s a hypocrite for taking assistance while now saying federal entitlement programs are unconstitutional.
Miller’s campaign didn’t provide an answer for the past week-and-a-half . . . when asked what low-income assistance he has received. But Miller addressed it Thursday when asked by reporters after a debate in Anchorage, saying people are entitled to know about his past benefits but "it’s a bit of a distraction from where we’re at today."
A bit of a distraction because it makes him look like a complete hypocrite? Miller went on to say that "I have the same sort of struggles in my past that other people have had. There is a proper role for government." It's just the state government that should be deciding whether it wants to provide the kind of help Miller's family--and millions of families across the country--received. Never mind that the states couldn't afford to provide that help without federal funding.
So Miller is a pretty typical American (albeit one with some really bizarre interpretations of the Constitution), deep in debt and having had to reach out for help in the past. Except that Joe Miller wants to take that help away from all the other people who need it. That makes him a hypocrite, at best.
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