Debt Today, Gone Tomorrow

When the story broke about Bill Frist's uncanny sense of timing for the sale of his HCA stock, I noted the massive investment losses Frist had suffered in his campaign fund and asked the following question in this post: "Did Frist's ongoing painful experience with losses in his campaign fund cause him to panic first when it came to his own wallet?"

From an AP report on Thursday:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist paid $72,012 from his own pocket to his 2000 re-election campaign fund in August, two months after he was notified that trustees had sold millions of dollars of his stock in HCA Inc., the hospital chain founded by his father and brother.

That Aug. 30 payment was disclosed in Federal Election Commission filings last Friday. The documents also show the campaign fund on the same day paid off a $349,107 outstanding loan from U.S. Bank Corp.

Both transactions enabled the Tennessee Republican to close the Senate campaign fund in anticipation of his retirement from the Senate next year and a possible run for the White House in 2008.

Linus Catignani, the finance director for Frist's 2000 re-election campaign, said the senator's $72,102 payment was made to close out the campaign committee, which was short of funds.

"So you have two options. One would be to fundraise and the other would be for him to pay it off personally and he chose to pay it off personally," he said.

Asked if the payment was made with the proceeds from stock sales, Catignani replied, "It was from his personal checking account."

Larry Noble, a former FEC enforcement lawyer and the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, said the loan repayment raised questions about the senator's finances.

"It's possible that the reason he sold the HCA stock was to have money to pay off the debt, but he hasn't said that," Noble said. "There's a number of financial actions going on here which fairly raise several questions.... They all could be part of one pattern or be separate things going on."

Noble said Frist's actions could be the result of a reluctance to ask donors he might tap for a presidential bid to help pay off old Senate campaign debts. He said it also could reflect an lingering embarrassment over the $478,000 that the Senate campaign fund lost in stock investments in 2000-2002.

Yes, there's an ongoing investigation into Frist's stock sale. But for some reason I keep remembering a line from the film Wall Street, which I recently saw for the umpteenth time: "The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."