Approaching the end of the year, there have been a number of stories about the edge Democrats have had in fundraising for 2007. There's no question that they have had the advantage of a base motivated to end the war, and of lobbyists eager to curry favor with new leaders they had ignored for years. (Although given the disappointment with the performance of Democrats in Congress so far, it's unclear whether either of those will help them in 2008.) Under the circumstances, it's no surprise that the Democrats have a fundraising advantage. But at least for the formal partisan campaign committees, it's not as large as some believe. For purposes of this piece, I'm going to look at how much money those committees have on hand -- rather than how much they have raised or spent to date. The cash on hand figure (net of outstanding debt), gives a better sense of where the committees stand today. Going into this month, the Republican National Committee had an edge of $15.7 million to $1.3 (after subtracting the debt still held by the DNC). That's a Republican advantage of $14.4 million. The DCCC had an edge over the Republican House campaign committee of almost exactly $30 million -- again, after accounting for debt currently held by each committee. The Democratic Senate committee has an edge over its Republican counterpart of just about $13 million. All told, the three Democratic campaign committees have an advantage of about $26 million over their Republican opponents. Republicans in the House however, are taking steps to ensure that their candidates will have the resources to compete in 2008. A number of incumbents recently came together to donate $3 million from their own campaign accounts to the NRCC. Those funds will be targeted to defeat Democratic incumbents -- and more such donations are expected. The primary focus is likely to be on the Freshman House Democrats, many of whom were elected in marginal or Republican-leaning districts. As I've pointed out before, Republicans will have more targets in the House next year than Democrats, if only because there are currently 61 Democrats sitting in seats carried by George Bush in 2004, against just 8 Republicans in districts carried by John Kerry. Further, House Republicans will also look to their retirees to contribute to the 2008 campaign. Much has been made of the fact that significantly more Republicans are retiring from the House than Democrats. The flip side is that most of those retirees do not intend to seek other offices, leaving them largely free to donate their cash reserves to other Republican candidates and committees. Republican sources expect that this will ultimately yield millions more to spend on promising candidates. Jim Saxton for example, reported having approximately $1.4 million in cash on hand at the end of September. Mike Ferguson had $760,000. Dave Hobson had just short of $1 million. Jim Ramstad ( who may be running for re-election after all) reported more than $830,000 to spend. Terry Everett had just about the same. In the months ahead, many Republican retirees will make donations to the NRCC or to Republican candidates. Republican sources expect such transfers to total in the millions -- moving House Republicans into a far better competitive position than they are in today. Combined with expected improvement in NRCC fundraising, House Republicans will see their financial condition improve dramatically in advance of the 2008 elections.