Fritz Hollings Quotes

In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.

I view the traditional two parties as in some ways very evil. They've become monsters that are out of control. The two parties don't have in mind what's best for Minnesota. The only things that are important to them are their own agendas and their pork. Government's become just a battle of power between the two parties.

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

The more that I know of politics, the more it makes me realize that being a politician is largely useless.

Special interests and Congress are too closely connected and the ties that bind are the millions spent on campaigns.

Politics these days is a disgusting game of mudslinging, filled with selfish people with selfish aims.

We only have politicians who are concerned with being reelected.

With every new class of representatives that comes to Congress, there is a greater recognition of the perils of private financing of campaigns. I believe that by pulling back the curtain on the daily pressures faced by members of Congress, we can show the public how critical this reform is to the salvation of our democracy.

I'm setting the record straight - Chuck Schumer is nothing but a political animal who symbolizes all that's wrong with American politics.

When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.

Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before, political parties used to raise money; now, individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt.

The Congress is virtually incapable of passing any reforms unless they first get permission from the powerful special interests who are most affected by the proposal.

Our forefathers never envisioned that a handful of staff write a bill and you rush it through a committee without reading it and you rush it to the floor without reading it, and you pass it just because you're a Democrat and Democrats told you to do that.

If career politicians had the solutions, we wouldn't be in the mess that we are.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

Believe it or not, there are members of Congress who actually want to govern and get stuff done. Unfortunately, there are others whose agendas and strategies serve to advance their own interests and expand their donor base.

Voters definitely believe Washington is corrupt - but most think it's bipartisan.

Sadly we have government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists. That is no way to run the Senate.

Spending limits not only do not work, they have the perverse effect of making special interests more powerful and more influential.

Politics was just about as dirty in those days as it is now.

America has the best congress money can buy.

We have become part-time Senators and full time fund-raisers. Even the schedule of the Senate itself is now arranged around the need to raise money for the next political campaign, rather than around the need to solve the nation's problems and do the people's business.

Most scandals involve broken laws. In the case of the congressional campaign financing system, the laws themselves are the scandal.