Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Public Officials Accountability Act, to ensure that our elected leaders cannot use their office for their own personal benefit. Public corruption has turned the ``Land of Honest Abe'' into the ``Land of Political Corruption.'' Illinois is the 6th most corrupt state in the Union, based on the number of public corruption convictions over the last decade. If just the northern district of Illinois were a state, it would have had the 7th highest number of public corruption convictions in the country in 2009. Illinois taxpayers pay the price for this in the form of a hidden public corruption tax. We need to make sure our laws help Federal prosecutors crack down on public corruption and restore integrity to Illinois. One such tool is the honest services law. For the past 30 years, the Department of Justice has fought public corruption by convicting scores of public officials who deny citizens the right to ``honest services.'' We are all too familiar with politicians failing to perform their public duties honestly in Illinois. The most famous Illinois politicians to be convicted of honest services fraud include former Governor Otto Kerner, late Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, former city of Chicago official Robert Sorich, and former Governor George Ryan. William Jefferson and Congressman Bob Ney are a few notable national figures to be convicted of this crime.…”