Steve Bullock Quotes

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

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.

I'm convinced that unless you have some public financing of elections, you are never going to remove the power of wealthy interests over elected officials.

The arms race for money being what it is, fundraising starts shortly after someone is elected to Congress.

In Montana, no one, including out-of-state corporate executives, has been excluded from spending money - or 'speaking' - in our elections. Any individual can contribute. All we require is that they use their own money, not corporate money that belongs to shareholders, and that they disclose who they are.

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

The way campaign funds are distributed are all a matter of record.

The American people have a right to know the source of the money that is being spent. They should be told who is behind the millions of dollars in campaign ads, and they should receive this information before they vote.

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

I've made it clear that I'm not taking special interest PAC money or accepting donations from lobbyists - ever. I want to represent the interests of the citizens.

The McCain-Feingold limit on how much you give a candidate didn't really work because people found ways to get around it.

It starts with campaign finance reform.

The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.

As long as we, in the United States, continue to insist that our politicians have to spend all of their time raising millions of dollars for television ads, it will be corrupt. If we leave it up to the politicians to clean up lobbying and finance reform, nothing is going to change.

In a political contest, the use of some [money] is both right, and indispensable.

Redistricting makes the inequities in campaign financing even worse. Most elections are so noncompetitive due to how the lines are drawn that big donors already know who's going to win. So they give to the likely winners to curry favor.

We have had a continuing problem of the equality of wealth and the power that goes with it. There are other ways of curtailing the power of corporations…. Congress is at fault for not requiring full disclosure of political contributions… Speech is the last thing we should be curtailing.

The campaign finance law is so intricate that I can’t figure it out.

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

History’s pendulum is now swinging back toward the day when political finances were only lightly regulated.

Most important of all the structural reforms, we need to follow through on the recent Congressional effort to discipline the use of money in politics, by setting reasonable limits on campaign spending, limiting and publicizing individual and organizational gifts and channeling much more of the money (including … all general election spending) through the respective party committees rather than through individual candidates’ treasuries.

This Court now concludes that independent [political] expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

What we have are - some of the big political donors behind the super PACs are big on promoting more of these trade agreements which cost us jobs - another reason that we need to end political action committees and have only individual donations with their donations being disclosed completely with names and addresses and other information.

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

I've never seen my filings. I've instructed my campaign to review my filings and check and see if any don't comply with state election laws, and return them.