Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Ever since I arrived in Washington in April 2009, I have been fighting for more transparency and accountability in government.

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

A government operates and acts differently than a company. So all we want to do is get some transparency here and then determine if the deal should go forward.

Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.

I don't think we've asked the right questions, the tough questions, at the right time, in Washington.

And this week, I am proposing legislation to strengthen our Open Records laws to make public access to our public records surer, faster, and more comprehensive.

I introduced the Transparency in Government Act, a multi-faceted transparency bill that would bring unprecedented access and accountability to the federal government.

Public agencies should be criticized.

… a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.

In the end, the public has the right to know about any undertakings top public officials engage in that may influence how they conduct the people's business.

One thing we know about government after the New Deal is that checks and balances through whistle-blowing is terrible policy.

She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.

Political leaders, lacking documents that could be kept secret (apart from the occasional exception), lacking media they could control, were of necessity brought into a direct and immediate relationship with their constituents, and therefore under more and direct and immediate control.

Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.

No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition and both are necessary.

It just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that [Donald Trump] is ever going to release his tax returns, because there's something he's hiding.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

A politician who enters public life may as well face the fact that the best way of not being found out is not to do anything which, if found out, will cause his ruin.

The American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country.

I have absolutely no problem with the press criticising policies and the things that we do, the things that we say.

I said it was a mistake. It wasn't the best choice. But all my emails have been turned over to the public.

Everybody who aspires to high positions of leadership in their state and in their country should be willing to take unscreened, unrehearsed questions from the people who pay their salary.

There are two things nobody should ever have to watch being made, sausage and laws.

The government being the peoples business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at all times open to the public view. Publicity is therefore as essential to honest administration as freedom of speech is to representative government. Equal rights to all and special privileges to none is the maxim which should control in all departments of government.

Hillary Clinton made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests and, in less than two years, secret speeches that she does not want to reveal under any circumstances to the public. I wonder why.