Political Quotes

“Imagine a President coming before a joint session of Congress and using his bully pulpit to call for a fundamental change in the way we fund political campaigns in America. Imagine a President saying we need to buy back our democracy by replacing special-interest-funded elections with publicly funded elections. As hard as it may be to believe, that happened. An American President did say that--100 years ago. His name was Teddy Roosevelt, and his call for public financing of campaigns was the cornerstone of his 1907 State of the Union Address. I know the Senate moves slowly, but a century is long enough to wait. Congress can pass all the lobbying and ethics reforms we want, but we won't get to the heart of the problem when it comes to the confidence of the American public until we address the issue of campaign financing. Special interest money and influence will always find new loopholes, until we change this political system fundamentally. Just yesterday, Senator Specter and I introduced a plan to do that. It is called the Fair Elections Now Act.”