Political Quotes

“So the decision was astounding to equate people with corporations and unions, on its face. As Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent: Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires . . . they are not themselves members of ``We the People'' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established. We all know corporations are important in our lives and they make enormous contributions to society, but they are not people, and their profit motive keeps them going. That is our system, and that is fine. But all we are saying in this debate over the DISCLOSE Act is, if a corporation or a union is going to take out an ad against a Senator or for a Senator, or against a challenger or for a challenger, that they simply stand up and say--that is, the CEO of the corporation: I am Mr. Smith, and I approved this message. When I make a commercial or any of my colleagues or any of our challengers, they need to do that. You will see that on every commercial: I am so and so, and I approved this message. So all we are saying is, level the playing field--at least that. We need to do a lot more to fix this Supreme Court decision, but at minimum let's have disclosure. The Fortune 100 companies had combined revenues of $13.1 trillion during the 2007-2008 election cycle. They had those revenues. If they devoted just 1 percent of that--1 percent of that--it would double the federally reported disbursements of all American political parties and PACs combined.…”