30 Sep 07, CLUTE, TX, USNA-- Ron Paul's presidential campaign announces its volunteers have begun paying the national debt shortfall of the United States of North America on an ongoing basis. Campaign director Jesse Benton describes the effort as "just another grassroots idea that had legs and took off running".

Last Monday, Paul's campaign made a typical appeal for additional donations to end the third quarter of 2007 in excellent fundraising condition. A relatively standard fundraiser "thermometer", web-enhanced with bells and whistles, graced their homepage. The widget code for this applet was quickly replicated by early viral bloggers, some of whom decided to place it in juxtaposition with the "National Debt Clock" applet that measures the rate at which the federal debt of $9 trillion is accumulated.

Within 24 hours, at least 100 bloggers had been inspired to copy this fortuitous combination. (Advertising policies at The Spoof forbid us from linking any of them.) Apparently there is intense interest in comparing the rate at which Paul's supporters move fiat money voluntarily out of their pockets, and the rate at which the government moves money by fiat out of Paul's supporters' pockets.

Before the fundraising deadline, the campaign suddenly found itself in a vicious cycle of reaching the challenged donation amount, raising the challenge, and reaching the challenged amount again, observed Benton. Meanwhile the idea bubbled up among the volunteers-- The Spoof was unable to determine who originated it-- of synchronizing the two clocks.

It took only a few more days of appeals to Paul's forty thousand unofficial meetup groups before the two funds reached parity yesterday at 10:32 p.m. EDT; they have remained comfortably synchronized. The most successful contribution method was for volunteers to schedule ongoing regular direct-draft pledge deductions from their payroll checks-- coincidentally, the same method the federal government uses to obtain its own "contributions". The Paul campaign continues to receive donations from supporters worldwide at a stable rate of about $1 billion per day.

Paul said via blog that he was "floored and sky-high" about the free-market solution to the debt problem, praising it as an exciting workaround to the Federal Reserve's monopoly stranglehold. He assured his hundreds of millions of supporters that any excess above campaign costs would be promptly directed to pay down the deficit-- as long as the trend continues, and as soon as they can figure out how to do it under Federal Election Commission regulations.

Incidentally, the Federal Election Commission had no comment, but a brief which appeared under "Recent Regulatory Activity" on their website may be responsive to Paul's unique situation. Last night via this link the FEC promulgated regulations creating an "improper format" fine on election reports that show receipts in excess of the permitted numeric character count of eleven digits (including pence). The fine is $1 billion for each offending billion.

Other candidates belittled Paul's success. Rudy Rompson claims to have had his "best fundraising night ever" this weekend after Paul supporters threw him into Lake Huron. Rompson's third-quarter receipts are still expected to trail behind Paul's.

Candidate and trance-channeler Johnny R. "John" Edward accused Paul's donors of being spammers who have created hundreds of false identities, bank accounts, and home addresses per person, merely to escape the $2,300 individual-donation cap. He also ridiculed the donors' supply-side solution as wholly ineffective, because it merely maintains deficit parity without touching the underlying national debt liability.

President-Elect Clinton shrugged, "Who is Ron Paul?" However, Clinton is also expected to report less than $1 billion in third-quarter receipts, being a paragon of FEC compliance. Clinton was recently required to deduct from her campaign receipts the sum of $850,000, disallowed by the FEC after she disclosed that, while trying to find out why her foot was hurting, she discovered the amount of cash in her left Hsu.

Campaign fundraising director Jon Bydlak also had no comment, but Benton assured The Spoof that Bydlak was unexpectedly busy with menial fundraising tasks, like bullion shipment insurance, international settlement reconciliation, and creation of Caymans shell corporations. Bydlak had also applied for permission to be designated as a new Federal Reserve system bank, but was turned down yesterday, so, Benton speculated, he may need to buy the Fed instead.