Senator Jim Bunning Ripping off Foundation?

Jim Bunning appears to be using money from his foundation for his own personal needs, which is meant to be donated to charities instead. For this story, I will be searching information pertaining to Bunning’s financial assets and financial information regarding his foundation to help charities. His average salary for being a senator is $174,000 a year and some other media outlets have reported that he takes more than $100,000 from his foundation for his own personal use, instead of donating it. However, according to his financial disclosure for 2008, excluding his life insurance, he is worth less than $4,000, which is located in a savings account. A few questions remain unanswered- exactly how much is he taking from his foundation and where is the money going.

Kentucky tax payers are helping pay Bunning’s salary and some are also donating to the foundation, with the impression that the money will be used toward charities. The truth of where the money is really going needs to be laid out for these Kentuckians to know. The best way to get the background of the situation between Bunning’s foundation and his personal financial information is to search the internet for campaign donations, salaries, assets, expenses and other information of that sort. Once the information is gathered, all the unanswered questions need to be looked at and then the best source to answer those questions needs to be contacted.

I have already used several sources to get a general idea of the situation. These include Campaign Money web site, LegiStorm web site and other various web sites regarding campaign funding. I have been searching for a website that lists personal taxes to see what type of items he is paying taxes on but those attempts have been unsuccessful so far. Other sources could be contributors to the Jim Bunning Foundation or Rick Robinson, a lobbyist that is in charge of the records for the foundation.

Idea for a follow-up:Although this could not be clearly answered until the next election, Senator Bunning has discussed the possibility of not running for re-election if he cannot raise enough money. If he chooses to not run, the question will be what is he going to do with the money that he collected for another campaign.