Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague. I have listened all afternoon as my Republican colleagues have held forth about the importance of the First Amendment. No one is debating that. That is not what this bill is about, despite your best efforts to suggest it is. What this bill is about is letting organizations spend millions of dollars of secret money, secret money, to try to buy elections to serve their special interests. That is what this bill is about. Now, our Republican colleagues have talked repeatedly about the Treasury inspector general's report. I don't know if they have read the report, but one of the recommendations was for the IRS to revise its regulations and guidelines to clarify this particular area. I would have hoped that all of us would want the IRS out of the business of determining whether or not a 501(c)(4) is primarily involved in political activity or primarily involved in social welfare activity. I don't want them under the nose of every organization trying to figure it out, and that is why the IRS is trying to reform this area of the law. So why isn't that what our Republican colleagues want? Because this isn't about allowing those groups to exercise free speech. It is allowing those organizations to be used to channel secret money without disclosing those expenditures to the voters. That is what this is all about, because you can spend as much money as you want on political advocacy and campaigns.…”