The Federal Election Commission will allow President Barack Obama’s campaign committee to pay for campaign finance penalties left over from Vice President Joseph Biden’s 2008 White House run.

As we reported earlier, the FEC was considering today whether to allow the transfer of funds between the presidential committees of Obama and the former six-term Democratic Senator from Delaware.

The FEC approved an advisory opinion at a meeting Thursday by a 6-0 vote to approve the request.

Biden’s presidential campaign was fined $133,000 earlier this year after an FEC audit found small violations and another $85,000 for stale-dated checks. But his campaign does not have enough funds in reserves — reporting just $82,000 in available cash on hand as of the end of September and nearly $8,000 in other debts.

Obama’s campaign, which has nearly $3.2 million in the bank, formally asked the FEC whether it could pay the outstanding fees to the Treasury Department on behalf of the vice president.

Also during its regular Thursday meeting, the FEC rejected a request by the CTIA to allow individuals to use their cell phones to text donations to federal candidates. The commission unanimously voted against the association’s proposal because texted funds were not transferred within the time frame required by federal law and political contributions would not be segregated from corporate funds.

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