Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin, who is a leader in our caucus, but also a very important leader on these issues. We are here this evening because a group of us now embark on a series of speeches on the Senate floor to shine some light into a network of phony front groups--a web of deceit conceived and bankrolled by the Koch brothers and other self-interested billionaires to advocate for very selfish and unpatriotic policies. This web of deceit has infiltrated and populated the Trump administration, and it is swamping the interests of everyday Americans. I will not dwell on its policies. The billionaires having to hide behind these front groups tells you all you need to know about their policies. There are plenty of billionaires these days, and a bunch of them do pretty good stuff, but there is an extremist subset trying to quietly remake America to their ideology, and they are behind the web of deceit. When an issue affects some hyperwealthy interest group, the web activates. In the Halls of Congress, on cable news, in opinion pages, on social media, the front groups will be everywhere, with fake news, bogus studies, and phony science. This is a well-studied phenomenon. Two speeches ago, I had a stack of books about this high here on the desk with authors who had written about it.…”