—that kind of thing, and I have no idea who it came from. Normally I give most of it away. If I could use it in my apartment, I throw it in the apartment, but we had one similar to that a couple of weeks before and we were advised that we needed to send it all back. It's just the practicality of it. Nobody here is trying in this day and age to find a loophole where we can get secret gifts. I think you understand that's relatively rare.
It's that practical idea. I don't know what to do with this darned thing. Under the last direction we had, I would be expected to rewrap it in a courier format, I guess, and send it back. But it just doesn't seem to make common sense that someone could give me $1,500, someone I know who's saying, “I like you, Dave. Here's $1,500 of my hard-earned cash. I want you to get re-elected,” yet some group, practically anonymously, sends me a bag of products to promote something—I don't know what it is—and suddenly this is like a major issue and we're violating all kinds of rules.
We're having trouble understanding, and I'll end with this. We're struggling with the common sense of that $1,500 and that you can do this. There's a declaration at $500. There's a $200 threshold at one point, and oftentimes the code and the loss are two different things. Then we get down to what looks like small potatoes, yet it's being made into a big deal. I'm sitting here. I have the darned thing in my office. I don't know what to do with it. By rights, I should spend all that money and time and send it back, but I have to tell you, I begrudge that because I have other things for my staff to be doing rather than messing around with that kind of thing.
So I'd like your thoughts, sir, on how you approach that common-sense idea of what's okay and what isn't okay.