Political Quotes

“I want to apologize to my friend from South Carolina because, as usual, he has been carrying the heavy load here. He has been carrying the water for all of us. I do apologize for not being here, to be more engaged in this debate. Frankly, I say to my friend from South Carolina, everything else we talk about--all the other talk about what we are going to do about campaign financing and campaign finance reform, and who has more money and who has less money, and how to avoid the stain and stink of money--ultimately, cannot make a difference until, we do what you have been telling us we need to do for the last decade or more. We have a Supreme Court that has interpreted the first amendment in a bizarre way. This is not only with regard to the Buckley case. Take, for example, all this talk about soft money. We would not be in the spot we are in with soft money in terms of both political parties had it not been for the Supreme Court decision last year. At least there used to be a couple of veils left in this dance of seven veils. Now, you have major, major contributors who can come in and just change the whole dynamic of Senate and House races. I just came from a meeting on chemical weapons. This is sort of the biological agent of politics that we are trying to eliminate here.”