Russ Feingold Quotes

The Citizens United ruling did not invent special-interest spending; it enables corporations and unions to advocate directly on behalf of a candidate rather than running more subtle 'issue ads.'

Well I think money has been going into political campaigns for a very long time.

Unless public officials are wealthy and fund their own campaigns, the only place they can turn to is lobbyists and institutions like labor unions and corporations.

There is no evidence that super PACs have led to a greater percentage of negative ads.

Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

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.

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

Soft money is the silent killer of health care reform and other legislation we need.

What is a super PAC? It’s like a PAC that got bitten by a radioactive lobbyist.

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

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.

A lot of the Citizens United problem could be solved if we knew where the money came from for all these ads. The companies create these entities with fake names - like 'Citizens for Nice Puppies' - which means that the sources of the money are unaccountable.

Wealthy individuals have always had the capacity to influence politics, of course, but only after two key campaign finance cases - Wisconsin Right to Life and and Citizens United, have they been able to do it in such a large and blatant way.

I'm not backed by the super PACs and the big corporations.

Here is what the practical impact of Citizens United means. What Citizens United means is that corporations call hundreds of millions of dollars into television ads, radio ads, and other forms of advertising to defeat those candidates who stand up and take them on.

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

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

We need a complete ban on soft money, which is sort of an enveloping problem, and a ceiling on the amount of money that can be spent on a given race.

Congressman are spending too much time raising money.

Much of the money raised in politics does not come free of charge.

American politics is money and thirty second spots.

Public [campaign] financing and free television time are the things that will diminish the high influence that money has on politics.

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.