Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

Money speaks louder than words in Washington.

Now, the typical way you make good things happen in Washington is you find a bunch of wealthy companies who agree with you.

People correctly perceive that the most powerful thing in Washington is money.

There are three things that are important in politics today: money, money and money.

Washington is dominated by big money.

The appalling reality in American politics today is that, when ideology and money mix, truth is a mere inconvenience.

People like Elizabeth Dole have given too much power to the special interests.

Obviously no one wants to give members of Congress a lot of money, because they barely do anything, and many of them are terrible, but a Congress that is made up of rich-but-not-super-rich people is going to be more corruptible than a Congress of really rich people.

The principal reasons that special interests can extract their price from government is money .... Those who do not accept money from PACs are those who have other sources.

Money distorts the democratic process in a fundamental way.

The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter [immigrants], but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.

Congressmen are not bribed anymore. They simply have a lot of friends who are willing to help them out whenever they find it necessary.

Campaign contributors are operating vicariously through the power of their purse rather than through the power of their ideas.

Lobbying is declared to be a crime.

The legislation is made up down on K street

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.

At home when people go to lawmakers and induce them with trips and gifts and so on to pass legislation, it's called corruption. But in the U.S. it's actually a profession called lobbying!

… lobbyist-larded Washington

We live in a country where Wall Street owns Washington.

Until we make campaigns affordable, then we're going to have too many members of Congress out rattling the cup with special interest groups.

If you're looking for the phony in American politics, you could do worse than follow the money.

I can't throw a nickel from the Capitol without hitting a think tank that's been financed by one of the Gulf States.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that is ready money.

Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?