Campaign Finance Disclosure Quotes

After the 1970s, when President Nixon's illegal campaign cash was used as a secret slush fund to pay for the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Americans have demanded to know where the money fueling our elections is coming from.

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

Shockingly, the Government Accountability Institute has reported that the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns received questionable contributions of more than $500 million as a result of poor disclosure requirements.

Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.

I have a record of wanting to make sure that campaigns are open and financing is fair, but it can't just be one sided.

Even though Mr. Trump can give his campaign as much of his own money as he wants to, he can't ask other people to front the money for him and promise to pay them back later without reporting the arrangement in a timely fashion to the Federal Election Commission.

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

As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech.

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

The Trump campaign generally does not respond at all to my requests for information - either requests for broader data on Trump's charitable giving or narrow requests for information about specific subjects, like the $20,000 portrait of himself that Trump seems to have purchased with money from his charity.

Voluntary public funding of elections solves the free speech 'problem' with more speech instead of more regulation: by giving qualified candidates who show broad-based constituent support enough matching public funds to mount a credible campaign.

Public campaign financing isn't perfect and can doubtlessly be improved upon as we go.

The goal of limiting campaign contributions is to find that line between contributions that are so high that a candidate feels beholden to a donor and contribution levels that are so low that a non-incumbent candidate has little chance of making an effective race.

Ultimately, the court is heading to a doctrine of 'separation of campaign and state.' This doctrine, like separation of church and state or separation of military and civilian authority, is not explicit in the Constitution but flows naturally from its structure and commitment to freedom and democracy.

It won't happen. It would be an impossible dream. But I'd love to see 'Citizens United' overruled.