Hugo Black Quotes

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.

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

I don't think I would have to run a campaign that's financed like General Motors.

It starts with campaign finance reform.

We are told there is not enough money for education, but somehow there is enough money for people to raise billions of dollars to defeat somebody in an election? Oh! Okay! Does that make sense?

Five years ago, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case told the richest people in America, "You already control the economy of the country. We are now going to let you control the political system as well".

You can’t get to be an officeholder in America without buying television time.

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.

At a time when concerns about the conduct of judicial elections have reached a fever pitch, the court today unleashes the floodgates of corporate and union general treasury spending in these races.

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

We agree that Citizens United is a very bad decision. We don't believe outspending your opponent is the way to go, since we don't believe we will ever be outspending our opponents!

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

You shouldn't have political action committees.

In 'Citizens United v. FEC', the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the federal campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold imposed unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of corporations.

One doesn't need money to run for Parliament, but it is undoubtedly expensive.

It takes money to run political campaigns. This is a cancer growing on the soul of our democracy.

The good news is dollars don't vote, people do.

The first thing you need to run for President is a budget of around $20 million dollars a day.

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.

No candidate dares to look for a new campaign model that could really enhance the democratic process. Instead we are left with the current one which makes our candidates look like hucksters.

Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.

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

We need to get rid of the Federal Elections Commission. It's a joke. It doesn't enforce the law.

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.