Political Quotes

“two years ago, with the stroke of a pen, five Supreme Court justices acted in a case known as Citizens United to overturn a century of law designed to protect our elections from corporate spending. They ran roughshod over longstanding precedent to strike down key provisions of our bipartisan campaign finance laws, and ruled that corporations are no longer prohibited from direct spending in political campaigns. I was troubled at the time and remain troubled today that in that case, the Supreme Court extended to corporations the same First Amendment rights in the political process that are guaranteed by the Constitution to individual Americans. Now, 2 years later, the American people have seen the sudden and dramatic effects of the Citizens United decision. The flood of corporate money flowing into campaigns from undisclosed and unaccountable sources has had an enormous influence in the Republican primary elections this year, just as it did in the 2010 mid-term elections. Instead of hearing the voices of voters, we see a barrage of negative advertisements from so-called Super PACs. This comes as no surprise to the many of us in Congress and around the country who worried at the time of the Citizens United decision that it turns the idea of government of, by and for the people on its head. We worried that the decision created new rights for Wall Street at the expense of the people on Main Street.…”