lobbying impact Quotes

The ability of big money to shape perceptions - where you have four anti-climate lobbyists for every single member of the House and Senate - is a big factor.

GAO studies often put the lie to these lobbying vehicles.

Obama & McCain differ, but neither takes on corporations.

When I go up there, I see coal lobbyists, oil lobbyists, natural gas lobbyists, nuclear power lobbyists, somehow they think that's where the action is in Congress.

[T]here may be some truth in that if the Arabs have some complaints about my policy towards Israel, they have to realize that the Jews in the U. S. control the entire information and propaganda machine, the large newspapers, the motion pictures, radio and television, and the big companies, and there is a force that we have to take into consideration.

As government grows bigger and more directly involved in the economy, the question of who gets what, through the medium of the lobbyist as broker, is of paramount importance.

Washington has seldom seen so numerous, so industrious or so insidious a lobby. There is every evidence that money without limit is being spent to sustain this lobby.... I know that in this I am speaking for the members of the two houses, who would rejoice as much as I would to be released from this unbearable situation.

It's being reported that Google spent over $5 million on lobbying just during the first quarter of this year. You'd think Google wouldn't really need to lobby politicians. All they have to say is, 'We have your search history. Do what we tell you.'

The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence.

There’s a real fundamental need for us. You think we have a bad system now? Without us lobbyists, just see what kind of government we would have them

I think that the influence of people with power and money to distort democracy and have their interests served before the rest of the population is the biggest problem. That is caused by two things: campaign finance and the way that's structured, and by the Citizen's United supreme court decision. So those two things are keeping democracy from working right.

When the power of private prisons is diminished, so, too, is their ability to engage in back-door political lobbying that has an impact on public and private prisons alike.

Let's talk about why, in the 1990s, Wall Street got deregulated. Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wall Street provided - spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions? Well, some people might think, yeah, that had some influence.

Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: The Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor.

Most people that I know don believe that a handful of corporations request sit together without disclosure, by the way, and pump hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process. That is not the democracy that many of us believe America should be.

It's abominable, and it's a disgrace to a great democracy to see what's happened in our country. The main reason for that has been the enormous infusion of high quantities of money to campaigns - governors, Congress, president and the U.S. Senate.

I didn't understand how much senators and members of the House are not able to represent the people because they're too busy fundraising to maintain their seat in office. I hope we as a country start looking at how we can change that.

The studies that show the reason Washington real estate is booming and there are so many lobbyists in town, it does pay.

If you take donations from Wall Street, you can't be independent.

We've investigated the gun lobby and its political donations and how it spread the Stand Your Ground laws from Florida.

The carbon lobby knew perfectly well that global warming posed real dangers, but it chose to deny those dangers and disparage anyone who sought to bring them to public attention. The lobby put its immediate economic interests ahead of humanity’s future well-being.

The rigidity of those pledges is something I don’t like. The circumstances change and you can’t be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. It’s—who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?

The corporations who invest in lobbyists, it pays in terms of tax loopholes, tax subsidies, all the rest. It pays. Clearly, the money has a big effect.

The politicians in America are all taken over by the lobbyists. I really believe the lobbyists keep them shut up because China and Chinese companies have all got tremendous lobbyists.