Jeffrey Sachs Quotes

The political battle is between big money combines who spend a thousand pounds or more on every constituency they fight… when they speak democracy, they don't mean government by the people...they mean financial democracy, in which money counts and nothing but money.

And when the guy [politician] says “Yes, I took money, but it didn’t influence my vote”? Oh, come on. The company that’s giving you the money thinks it is going to influence the vote. Why else would they give you the money?

Washington is dominated by big money.

Are my politics Democrat or Republican? I think both are horrific. And it doesn't matter anyway. Money runs America; money runs everywhere.

This system stinks and every senator who participates in it knows it stinks. And the American people are right when they mistrust this system, when what matters most in seeking public office is not integrity, not ability, not judgment, not reason, not responsibility, not experience, not intelligence, but money …. Money dominates the system. Money infuses the system. Money is the system.

The spree of big money campaigning—and the corruption that goes with it—seems guaranteed to worsen …. Campaign money handlers will keep pushing the limits wherever and however they can—and the integrity of our electoral system will pay the price.

Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

America has the best congress money can buy.

It's obscene how money is driving politics.

Congress has become the center of legalized bribery/

The Federal campaign contribution limit of $2,500 is way too low. You can’t even buy a Democrat for $2,500.

We live in a country where Wall Street owns Washington.

The use of such means and such agents [paid lobbyists] will have the effect to subject the State governments to the combined capital of wealthy corporations, and produce universal corruption, commencing with the representative and ending with the elector. Speculators in legislation, public and private, a compact corps of venal solicitors, vending their secret influences, will infest the capital of the Union and of every State, till corruption shall become the normal condition of the body politic.

Our government is for sale.

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

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

We have the best government that money can buy.

Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question.

You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that. But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser - and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.

Money often determines not only who gets elected, but what gets done. Which voices do lawmakers listen to, the banks or home owners, coal companies, or asthma sufferers, the CEOs or the unemployed?

What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

Big money is ruining the political system.

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.

Our politics has been greatly impacted, for the worse, by big money and the concentration of big money.