Political Quotes

“I am honored to join the senior Senator from Oregon in support of this important resolution. As I think everybody on this floor has observed, there is a rot in our American democracy, and there is a shadow over the Halls of Congress. The rot is dark money, and the shadow is special interest influence empowered by that dark money. A lot of this goes back to the extraordinarily misguided decision of the U.S. Supreme Court--or, I should say, five Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court--in Citizens United, which took the astonishing position that the integrity of our elections should receive a value of zero in their calculus and their solicitude should be exclusively for the wealthiest forces that bring their power to bear on American democracy, because, after all, if what you are doing is unleashing the power of special interests to spend millions of dollars, by definition, you are only powering up the group that has millions of dollars to spend and a reason to spend it. That is, perhaps, the segment of the American population entitled to the least solicitude in our great American debate. Yet it was the exclusive interest of the five Republican appointees on the Court. It was an evil balancing of priorities but, sadly, part of a long tradition--going back to the Bellotti decision--of Republican appointees to the Supreme Court expanding the role and influence of corporations and special interests.…”