Political Quotes

“I rise for the third time this year to call for transparency and disclosure in our system and throughout our government. This appropriations bill will spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars next year; and a huge portion of it, a portion that's impossible to quantify, will go to contractors. Some are small, others rank among the world's largest companies. As we meet today, the workforce of contractors in Afghanistan is the same size as the workforce of the uniformed personnel there; and since 2005, we've spent approximately $12 billion on contractors in Afghanistan. Today, there are more private contractors than uniformed personnel in Iraq, and we've spent $112 billion on contractors in Iraq since 2005. The Federal Government does business with thousands of contractors who receive billions of dollars in taxpayer money. They should be required to disclose their political spending, and that's what my amendment will accomplish. In 2002 when we voted to pass the historic McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, most Republicans voted ``no,'' saying we needed disclosure, not soft money restrictions. They said we needed to put spending out in the open and let the voters assess it. Today, when the President proposes requiring contractors to simply disclose their spending, not to limit it, Republicans are up in arms.…”