Warren Buffett Quotes

There can be no clearer indication of how undemocratic the way we finance campaigns is than the fact that only one-quarter of 1% donate $200 or more, and only one-tenth of 1% gives $1,000 or more.

The realistic way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in money -- the importance of government in allocating wealth and opportunity.

So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.

Call-time has renewed my faith in the need for public financing of elections. 'Call-time' is where I as the candidate, sit in a room with my 'call-time manager,' and a phone. Then I call people and ask them for money. For hours. Apparently, I'm really good at it.

I think we have to look at the whole way campaigns are financed. The No. 1 problem is PAC and special-interest money.

I'm convinced that unless you have some public financing of elections, you are never going to remove the power of wealthy interests over elected officials.

As dismayed as Americans are with the influence of the special interests that finance election campaigns, they've been reluctant to embrace the alternative: taxpayer-financed elections.

When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case told the richest people in America, "You already control the economy of the country. We are now going to let you control the political system as well".

Public [campaign] financing and free television time are the things that will diminish the high influence that money has on politics.

The evils of the use of corporate money in connection with political elections are so generally recognized that the committee deems it unnecessary to make any argument in favor of the general purpose of this measure.

I will not be doing Super-Pacs of any sort. I think allowing unlimited contributions to campaigns is a terrible and an unfortunate step towards plutocracy.

That would be the biggest shake-up Washington ever had, if big money didn't dictate who the candidates were and who got elected.

Dependence on private money to run campaigns causes pain to Republicans and Democrats alike - and business owners. It's time we did something about it. And public financing of elections should be the first step.

Stemming the tide of special interest campaign cash - and restoring fiscal responsibility in Congress - is no easy task. But there is one place where concerned citizens in both parties can begin: Changing the source of money that funds all campaigns.

What we have are - some of the big political donors behind the super PACs are big on promoting more of these trade agreements which cost us jobs - another reason that we need to end political action committees and have only individual donations with their donations being disclosed completely with names and addresses and other information.

One of the things I care about a lot is public financing in elections.

If you took money out of politics, you'd solve 80 percent of all the problems.

Any constitutional amendment that simply gives Congress the option of regulating campaign finance fails to immediately achieve what the American people want, and that is a complete reversal of Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions that have allowed corporations and the wealthy few to drown out the voices of everyday voters.

In the Senate, I will push to overturn Citizens United as I've been vocal about since I first served on the Town Council.

Public financing would fix campaign donor problems.

The leftists are constantly whining and moaning about all the money in politics. They want campaign finance reform, right? They want to get all the money out of politics. They want government money governing campaigns. They want all the money out, they say. But then you look at their coffers, and it's overflowing with hundreds of millions of dollars.

The billionaires and their super PACs increasingly control the American political process. This is not democracy. This is not what brave Americans fought and died to defend. This is oligarchy. This is government of the few, by the few and for the few. We must overturn Citizen United and move to public funding of elections.

I am committed to curbing the influence of money in our political system.

If we don't get reform in campaign financing, then we can write this country off.