David L. Boren Quotes

We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before, political parties used to raise money; now, individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt.

It is campaign money that calls the tune, a fact recognized by every politician within a few minutes after getting into politics.

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

Not since the gilded age has our politics been opened so wide to corporate contribution and donations from secret sources.

The first iron rule of American politics is Follow the Money. This explains, oh, about 80 percent of what goes on in Washington.

I would do away with super PACs. I think it's a cancer.

Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.

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.

The reality is that asking the public to fund political campaigns accomplishes nothing. Candidates continue to seek interest-group support through other channels, both financial and in-kind, and corruption problems abound.

I don't think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests.

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.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.

Most successful American politicians look well-fed on endorsements, campaign contributions and chicken dinners.

Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.

Spending limits not only do not work, they have the perverse effect of making special interests more powerful and more influential.

America has the best congress money can buy.

A $5,000 campaign contribution to a member of Congress will hardly get you a thank you these days.

Special interests and Congress are too closely connected and the ties that bind are the millions spent on campaigns.

Politicians can be bought and often are.

So long as politicians need millions to win a seat in Congress and nearly a billion to contest the White House, they will sanctify the methods needed to raise such sums.

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

This [political fundraising] is a very sophisticated system … This is a legalized bribery system where no one has to say anything. I don’t have to say what I want—you [the politician] know what I want.

A millionaire can buy a Senate seat just as he would buy an opera box or a yacht or any other luxury in which he can afford to indulge himself. In some instances the sale takes the form of open bribery of the legislators; more often the Senate seat was simply the satisfaction of a ‘claim’ acknowledged by the leaders of the party and created by large contributions to the party treasury.

I am willing to undergo the disadvantage in order to make certain that in the future we shall reduce the power of money in politics..

This Court now concludes that independent [political] expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.