Russ Feingold Quotes

I am a passionate advocate of getting special interest money out of politics.

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.

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

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be 'Citizens United.' I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

What has become clear to many Americans is that the electoral system is bankrupt. As the political process becomes more privatized, outsourced, and overrun with money from corporations and billionaires, a wounded republic is on its death bed, gasping for life.

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

The SuperPACs and the Citizens United ruling that gives corporations a voice in the political process are all bad news. They made it so you can now lie, and the politician being promoted on that lie will not be held responsible for it.

Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect.

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

I'm voting for Bernie Sanders because he doesn't take any corporate money.

Without putting the brakes on out-of-control campaign contributions from individuals and corporations - it will be business as usual, with 1 percent of Americans pulling the strings.

Our laws governing lobbying and campaign contributions have struck the right balance between the wishes of the people and those of private industry, so why are we so quick to doubt that the same great results can be achieved by putting the government's justice-dealing branch on the same market-based course?

When I first came to Congress, the party was supposed to help you. Now, when a new member is sworn in, he or she is told what their dues are - how much they are expected to raise for the party for the next election. It's worse in the Senate. It turns the whole place into a money machine.

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

Real lobbying reform must end the practice of corporate lobbyists writing our laws.

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

In Maine, we are fortunate to have a Clean Elections system that allows legislators to turn down corporate special interest money. At the national level, Congress should follow Maine's example by empowering the voices of small donors.

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.

I can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don't blame the American public. The U.S. Supreme Court has a lot to answer for, because it has made it impossible for Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on American political life.

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

Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

The Federal campaign contribution limit of $2,500 is way too low. You can’t even buy a Democrat for $2,500.

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

The evils of the use of corporate money in connection with political elections are so generally recognized that the committee deems it unnecessary to make any argument in favor of the general purpose of this measure.