John Stuart Mill Quotes

If the friends of the candidate choose to go to expense for committees and canvassing [campaigning] there are no means of preventing them; but such expenses out of the candidate’s own pocket, or any expenses whatever beyond the deposit of £50 (or £100), should be illegal and punishable.

I think it is wrong to spend $4 or $5 million in a campaign.

The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races.

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

The decision in McCutcheon v. FEC is a devastating blow in efforts to rein in out-of-control costs of campaigns.

I do not believe wealthy candidates should spend vast resources in their own campaigns.

People have their constitutional right to contribute to a campaign and if they have discretionary money that they want to contribute to a candidate, whether a Republican or a Democrat, they should be able to do so.

The Court made an exception, however, in the case of candidates contributing to their own campaigns because of the rather reasonable presumption that a candidate is incapable of corrupting himself.

They ended up spending a total, their campaign plus the independent, about 1.3 million. I only ended up spending about - not only, but I spent about 2 million. But I had no intention of doing that until I was attacked with a negative ad by an independent group.

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

Even though Mr. Trump can give his campaign as much of his own money as he wants to, he can't ask other people to front the money for him and promise to pay them back later without reporting the arrangement in a timely fashion to the Federal Election Commission.

There probably could be some mileage in running a comparative study about how best to finance electoral campaigns around the world.

British electoral law forbids different campaign organisations acting in concert unless they have a shared cap on spending.

Elections are a competition with only one winner. Giving more money to the opponent every time one speaks on behalf of a favored candidate discourages the speech that triggers the matching funds.

I don't think anyone's pushing for spending limits in the campaign.

When I ran for governor of Minnesota, I only raised $300,000.

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

It's important not to limit the amount of their own money that candidates can spend, but to give other people access to enough money to run competitive races.

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

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.

Well, paycheck protection is an important ingredient for a successful campaign finance reform measure.

One of the biggest issues for me is campaign finance reform.

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

In Canada we have limits on campaign spending and public funding of campaigns. This makes it easier for people [candidates] who don't have access to huge amounts of money.

Congressman are spending too much time raising money.