Bart Gordon Quotes

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

Ultimately, the question of campaign contributions will be decided by the public.

Congressman are spending too much time raising money.

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

Not since the gilded age has our politics been opened so wide to corporate contribution and donations from secret sources.

I think we have to look at the whole way campaigns are financed. The No. 1 problem is PAC and special-interest money.

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

As dismayed as Americans are with the influence of the special interests that finance election campaigns, they've been reluctant to embrace the alternative: taxpayer-financed elections.

Soft money is the silent killer of health care reform and other legislation we need.

Public [campaign] financing and free television time are the things that will diminish the high influence that money has on politics.

History’s pendulum is now swinging back toward the day when political finances were only lightly regulated.

If we must have campaign contributions, this is the way to raise them. If you would start this method now, you would begin a tremendous reform.

Spending limits have proven a monumental failure at limiting campaign spending in presidential elections, merely diverting the money underground.

Dependence on private money to run campaigns causes pain to Republicans and Democrats alike - and business owners. It's time we did something about it. And public financing of elections should be the first step.

The key to fixing public financing is to free politics from big money.

Running on corporate-PAC money is a huge liability.

I would do away with super PACs. I think it's a cancer.

In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.

Who do you think controls the Republican Party? Big money controls the Republican Party. This is where their campaign contributions come from.

A political race today, even a primary, is $150 million. The whole political system has become obscene in terms of the absurd amount of money that is required to compete. Just put it on ESPN and call it a sporting event.

Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

Few developments in campaigning have been as vilified and misunderstood as independent expenditure PACs, or, as they are colloquially known, super PACs.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

The McCain-Feingold limit on how much you give a candidate didn't really work because people found ways to get around it.