Speaking live for the first time on his decision to opt out of public financing, Obama discusses campaign financing at a press conference in Florida.
Obama contrasts his operations, where 90% of his donations have come in from small donors, to McCain's, whose campaign has accepted huge amounts of money from special interests and federal lobbyists:
"The system is broken because what we've got is a system where we have 527s raising vast amounts of money, much of it undisclosed, from special interests, from PACs, from federal lobbyists..."
"We don't take PAC money, we don't take money from federal registered lobbyists. We've now imposed those same rules on the DNC. 90% of our contributions are from small donors. And what we have done is to create a system, that allows us to free ourselves from dependence on special interests, from lobbyists. That stands in contrast to McCain's operations now, where he says he's in the system
, yet, a huge proportion of his money is raised from special interests, from lobbyists. I don't think that's a recipe for reform."