David Fahrenthold Quotes

The first thing you need to run for President is a budget of around $20 million dollars a day.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.

I've been a strong financial and political supporter of, first, President Bush Sr. when he was running for president, and even when he ran for president a time or two and failed.

For Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who chairs the investigations subcommittee, the top sources of funding for his 2012 reelection campaign are from the insurance, banking, finance, securities and real estate industries.

I think the presidency is a bad way to measure the effective campaign finance, because in the presidency, there is so much publicity, there's so much money floating around.

The fact remains that we're running a presidential campaign. And we're doing that through appearances like today, fund-raisers like today, where Donald Trump was in Texas, raising money, not just for the trump campaign, but, drumroll, please, for the RNC and the Republican committees, which benefits all these candidates that Paul Ryan is trying to protect.

Donald Trump didn't have much in the bank at all, to the tune of three-point-some-odd million dollars, whereas Hillary has something like (I don't know; I forget the number), $35 million or $40 million that she can legally spend now president the point was made that the Democrats did the same thing to Mitt Romney back in 2012 before Romney could spend the money that he had raised.

It is now clear that giving to a candidate’s PAC is equivalent to giving to his campaign; the leaders of the PAC are, for all practical purposes, are the campaign’s bag men.

The men and women who now run for Congress have special features. Most of them are much wealthier than their constituents. Surprisingly few have strong policy interests or experience. Most are willing to spend a day or two or three each week asking strangers for money on the telephone, a demeaning but obligatory exercise. Most have internalized an ethical code that allows them to solicit campaign contributions from people directly affected by legislation they vote on. This is not rare or even unusual — it’s standard

Spending for congressional campaigns is getting to be like the arms race.

All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.

To get on an important [Congressional] committee, a member has to raise a certain amount of money per election cycle. If he does not, he will be dropped from the committee. Both parties actually have a formal price tag for that they call A, B and C committees.

A typical member of Congress devotes several hours a day to asking for contributions and several more to worrying about how her donors will feel about her votes on the floor.

Until the 1980s, candidates spent a fraction of their time talking to donors; just a few weeks a year, a little more right before an election. True, they'd fund raise from the wealthy interests, as they do now, but it was a minuscule part of their job: policy and constituent services were the heart of the work.

I talked to congressmen who really hate having to go to the many fundraisers, but they see it as a necessary part of their job.

A lot of the Citizens United problem could be solved if we knew where the money came from for all these ads. The companies create these entities with fake names - like 'Citizens for Nice Puppies' - which means that the sources of the money are unaccountable.

There's no doubt that there's a public backlash against the way campaign money is raised, but I don't think the only alternative is to elect people with money.

There's no way now for you to get a Democratic or Republican nomination without being able to raise $200 or $300 million or more. I would not be inclined to do that, and I would not be capable of doing it.

It would be a lot cheaper for me not to have to raise tens of millions of dollars to elect progressive candidates who will raise my taxes.

The Koch brothers are spending more money against me than I've been able to raise.

Donald Trump is running this campaign. And I'm working directly for Donald Trump.

Because Republicans have no ideas, they want to turn elections into the battle of dollars.

I feel like I understand Trump's character better than the average person now, having seen all of these little interactions with charity. I wanted to keep doing something that's like that, and not just doing pure politics. So my piece of the Trump empire is the golf courses, Mar-a-Lago, and the winery.

Since Trump began running for president in summer 2015, he has repeatedly used his hotels and golf courses as venues for his campaign events - and paid himself for the privilege.

Politicians need money at election time and money to get the vote. Well, more than half of money in election comes from corporate interests whose interests are in polluting the Chinese environment and making products.