George W. Gekas Quotes

The assumption has to be that members of Congress are, like eunuchs in a harem, physically incapable of a conflict of interest.

The host of contractors, speculators, stockjobbers, and lobby members which haunt the halls of Congress, all desirous ... to get their arm into the public treasury, are sufficient to alarm every friend of this country. Their progress must be arrested.

Those guys [congressmen] lived on the basis of getting their little tidbits and their perks.

I am against government by crony.

Pork is the most visible malady of Congress from the public point of view.

Donations to political parties, candidates and elected officials should not be a means to gain personal or policy favours or buy access to politicians or civil servants…. Political parties, candidates and politicians should disclose assets, income and expenditure to an independent agency.

It makes me mad to see people in government serving themselves at our expense.

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.

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.

When you start attacking cronyism and people's political interests, it gets nasty.

I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money.

Obviously no one wants to give members of Congress a lot of money, because they barely do anything, and many of them are terrible, but a Congress that is made up of rich-but-not-super-rich people is going to be more corruptible than a Congress of really rich people.

D.C. is more corrupt than Hollywood. It really is.

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

People in Washington do things that they shouldn’t do because they owe somebody.

The Pig Book

The theory is that election to Congress is tantamount to being dispatched to Washington on a looting raid for the enrichment of your state or district, and no other ethic need inhibit the feeding frenzy.

America has the best congress money can buy.

Where the public money runs deepest the hogs fight each other to get their snouts in the trough, and the big trough nowadays runs through the Pentagon.

Honorariums are really dishonorariums. So long as they continue, public trust in Congress will sink even below its minimal level today.... Public officials should have only one paymaster: the Government. When the Government pays too little, the temptation to find other paymasters becomes far harder to resist.

Clinton talks reform, but it's business as usual in Washington with different pigs at the trough.

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

I know that it would not shock you to discover that this isn’t the first time that Congress and the regulatory agencies did not act in the public interest.

The Capitol Building should have a sign saying, “Warning!! You are now Entering an Ethics-Free Zone!”

There are hundreds and hundreds .... We've had the policy of protecting members and not exposing them, but we've taken a lot of abuse. There are members on the bandwagon of anti-spending, but they come and get their share.