Election Financing Quotes

When I first came to Congress, the party was supposed to help you. Now, when a new member is sworn in, he or she is told what their dues are - how much they are expected to raise for the party for the next election. It's worse in the Senate. It turns the whole place into a money machine.

As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, American democracy is being undermined by the ability of the Koch brothers and other billionaire families. These wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the candidates of their choice. We need to overturn Citizens United and move toward public funding of elections so that all candidates can run for office without being beholden to the wealthy and powerful.

My issue with campaign finance is 100 percent disclosure. Wear a suit with patches from your big contributors. Depending on the size of the contribution, that's how big the patch should be.

The campaign finance law is so intricate that I can’t figure it out.

The 113th Congress has spent much of the year doing nothing but collecting campaign contributions …

There are many major crises facing our country. At the top of the list is the need to overturn Citizens United. If billionaires are able to buy elections and elect right-wing candidates, there is no way we will ever address climate change, college education, affordability, job creation, raising the minimum wage and taking on Wall Street.

I'm asking regular folks to be my super PAC.

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

The rich don't win elections. They support the money, but what percentage of America are rich? What is it, 2 percent? But they all have one vote.

We are told there is not enough money for education, but somehow there is enough money for people to raise billions of dollars to defeat somebody in an election? Oh! Okay! Does that make sense?

The problem isn’t too little money in political campaigns, but not enough.

There were 14,000 people at the rally for the president in Ohio. There were another 8,000 people in Virginia. If all 22,000 of those people opened their wallets and gave $1,000 each, that would be less than one donation from a billionaire to the super PACs. And that's why he's in for the fight of his life.

Research who your politicians are, even; know what they do, know who they're supported by legislatively, and know who is supporting them financially for their campaigns. Because ever since Citizens United, we've seen a massive growth in the amount of campaign contributions and corruption in politics as a result, and that has to change.

A corporation cannot make a campaign contribution to a candidate for federal office.

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.

Obama has had more fundraisers than the last six presidents combined. And he's still losing in the money race!

I'm not backed by the super PACs and the big corporations.

If the United States really wanted to increase political diversity, it would provide the option for candidates to run with public funds.

Change the way we fund campaigns. Until we do, Wall Street will always be able to blackmail the Dems and GOP to giving them what Wall Street wants.

We have to have campaign contributions to apprise the public about our qualifications.

I've never made a political donation to Hillary Clinton or any other political candidate.

The usual test under the Federal Election Campaign Act for whether something counts as a campaign expenditure is whether the obligation would have existed but for the campaign. If so, it is not a campaign expenditure.

Every major federal campaign-finance-reform effort since 1943 has attempted to treat corporations and unions equally. If a limit applied to corporations, it applied to unions; if unions could form PACs, corporations could too; and so on. DISCLOSE is the first major campaign-finance bill that has not taken this approach.

Let's face it, the subject of campaign finance is not always scintillating. But it's incredibly important.

The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes.