Sheldon Whitehouse

I think we have a problem of an unfortunate circularity between wealth and political influence.

Mike, I would actually really like working with you on this. As you know, there's substantial overlap in our thinking and in our experience.

So this combination of huge amounts of political money flowing into the system from big special interests kept secret from the American public, has dramatically added to the long-term difficulty of trying to have fairness in Congress.

I think there's an enormous opportunity here.

Which they can put into a pricing advantage and crush small businesses with a pricing advantage that they only got by hiding revenue offshore?

I watched that get dramatically worse after the Citizens United decision, when wealthy special interests could spend unlimited amounts of money in politics.

If you believe in a progressive tax system, they should be paying a lot more than 25 percent, because when one percent of the population gets 22 percent of the entire country's income, more than the entire lower 50 percent, that is such a…

This corrupted Tax Code lets billionaires pay an average tax rate of just 8.2 percent, less than half the rate of a typical teacher or firefighter.

Letting multinational corporations shift profits to tax havens leaves a trillion dollar bill for everyone else to pay.

Letting wealthy business owners avoid Medicare taxes on their full income costs Medicare $250 billion in lost revenue.

Simple fairness is reason enough to end this rigged system.

Letting billionaires pay low or zero tax rates costs America $550 billion.

The danger is that a pharmacy benefit manager... can become just a toll taker, or just a self-dealer.

Nobody is blowing the whistle on the initial price being a phony, because the PBMs... are actually in on the economics of the transaction.

The danger is that a pharmacy benefit manager... can become just a toll taker, or just a self-dealer.

Since Citizens United, we have made really no bipartisan progress on any significant piece of climate legislation.

I see the malevolent force of the fossil fuel industry through its politics and through its dark money everywhere.

Like public health? Like people not dying of cigarette-caused cancer?

It seems to me that it's fairly elementary economics that the negative externalities of a product ought to be included in the price of the product.

So a good Good Neighbor Rule will pay huge dividends.

I can recall, to your point, driving into work and on drivetime radio hearing the local announcement that today was a bad air day in Rhode Island.

Since Citizens United, we have made really no bipartisan progress on any significant piece of climate legislation.

I see the malevolent force of the fossil fuel industry through its politics and through its dark money everywhere.

Like public health? Like people not dying of cigarette-caused cancer?

It seems to me that it's fairly elementary economics that the negative externalities of a product ought to be included in the price of the product.