Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues and to associate myself with their remarks on the critically important issue of unlimited and unaccountable money in our political system. I would like to thank my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, for organizing this speaking series and for being a national leader on the issue of campaign finance reform. While my colleagues make important points about how our rigged campaign finance system can and does serve as a channel for anonymous billionaires and special interests to exert undue influence across our political system, I would like to focus my remarks on a related issue: how our broken campaign finance system also threatens our national security. There is no serious dispute that malign foreign actors like Russia are working to subvert our democratic processes and sow chaos in our political system. As we have seen, their strategies depend not on direct conventional attacks upon our Nation, but an asymmetric approach that exploits the existing divisions and vulnerabilities of our open society, our democratic institutions, and our free markets. Even though we are now aware of this, we have not taken the necessary steps to repair the situation. Indeed, our Nation retains a campaign finance system that empowers anonymous donors to funnel unlimited amounts of money to influence public policy at every level of government, and to hide their actions behind corporations.…”