Jeff Flake Quotes

There's a lot of politics over who gets the next allocation of Congressional funding.

The U.S. Senate does not allow legislative provisions to be included in appropriations bills, for much the same reason that most Americans are concerned about earmarks: it creates a slippery slope by which lobbyists and special interest groups can sneak provisions into large, must-pass legislation.

We all have to pay when powerful members of Congress work to bring home the bacon.

When Congress opens the government’s purse, the benefits flow to special interests rather than the public interest.

Pete Wilson deregulated energy as a pay out to Enron, and we blamed Gray Davis.

Two million dollars is only small when you're talking about Washington, D.C.

You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that. But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser - and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.

Politicians like to confuse congressional spending with earmarks. There is a difference.

There's no doubt about it, earmarks are not very popular. There are good earmarks and bad earmarks. The good earmarks are the ones I get for my district.

He [Donald Trump] buys and sells politicians of all stripes.

The hardest way to make a million dollars is to become a United States senator. Any vicious, impudent, brazen, shrewd, gifted person can think of an infinite number of better ways to become rich than to become a crooked politician.

There is $2.6 trillion spent in Washington, with the authority to regulate everything in your life…. People will spend unheard-of amounts of money to influence that.

The principal reasons that special interests can extract their price from government is money .... Those who do not accept money from PACs are those who have other sources.

It is in the committee that the dirty work is done ... away from the many-eyed scrutiny of the rest of Congress and the public ... special interest legislation usually originates in the committee room.

Money speaks louder than words in Washington.

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.

Corporations write the legislation. They vote on the legislation. And they give advice on how to pass their bills.

Members of Congress can not only benefit corporations, but also they can hurt corporations. This gives them the opportunity to extort funds from moneyed interests.

If you can deregulate money in politics, then you can buy the policy outcomes you prefer.

A millionaire can buy a Senate seat just as he would buy an opera box or a yacht or any other luxury in which he can afford to indulge himself. In some instances the sale takes the form of open bribery of the legislators; more often the Senate seat was simply the satisfaction of a ‘claim’ acknowledged by the leaders of the party and created by large contributions to the party treasury.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

From campaign contributions to expensive perks paid for by special interests, wealthy donors and corporate special interests have increasingly been able to purchase influence and promote their agendas in Congress.

That's the very essence of pork barrelism, when you give a huge lump sum to a person and say, 'Well, tell us what you want it for, but you are free to decide where to spend it on.'

We have a culture of political corruption in Jefferson City. We have corrupt politicians, well-paid lobbyists and special-interest insiders taking the state in the wrong direction.

The bill's a textbook example of special interest pork barrel politics at work, and I have no choice but to veto it.