(7 of 10)
Some Senators were quick to point out, however, that Lance's other accounts were often insufficient to cover the overdrafts by himself, his wife—whose personal overdrafts reached a high of $110,493 in 1974—and his gubernatorial campaign committee, which overdrew its accounts by as much as $152,706 in 1974. He insisted, however, that he had given the bank a $110,000 certificate of deposit to cover any campaign overdrafts, as well as an unlimited signed guarantee that he would meet all of his political committee's debts to the bank. And, Lance claimed, all of the overdrafts by himself, LaBelle and his campaign committee had been repaid "without a penny being lost to the bank." This, of course, ignored the fact that the overdrafts amounted to free loans, on which the Calhoun bank lost interest. Many banks now offer overdraft privileges but set limits at $5,000 and in some cases $15,000, and charge interest fees of about 18% a year.
Delaware Republican William Roth Jr., for one, was not satisfied with Lance's explanation that he had repaid the bank. Roth compared this reasoning to the rationale "of a person who goes through a red light and says nobody was hurt so my going through was all right." Lance could not satisfactorily explain to Ribicoff why he had written a letter to federal bank examiners in 1973 saying his overdraft problem would be corrected and why he had failed to heed the criticism of bank examiners who found that the overdraft situation was "abusive" and "the age and size of the overdrafts is appalling." Instead, the collective overdrafts by Lance and his relatives increased until the Comptroller of the Currency finally demanded in 1975 that they be stopped.
Lance was wrong in claiming that federal examiners had not considered him to be in violation of a U.S. law forbidding any bank officer to get a loan of more than $5,000 from his own bank for his personal expenses. A federal examiner in 1971 and Comptroller Heimann this year both reported that Lance had been technically in violation of this civil statute, since an overdraft is, in effect, a loan. Maryland Republican Charles Mathias Jr., mixing metaphors, termed the practice of letting Lance's campaign committee "write rubber checks that wouldn't bounce, like the goose that lays the golden egg."