Campaign Spending Limits Quotes

The Democracy is for People Amendment will stop corporations and their front groups from using their profits and dark money donations to influence our elections while reaffirming the right of the American people to elections that are fair and representatives that are accountable.

Spending limits not only do not work, they have the perverse effect of making special interests more powerful and more influential.

So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.

There's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd.

The rich are hijacking American democracy.

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.

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

Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

If Republicans want to defend the rights of corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited, secret money in campaigns, then they should say so.

Money is speech. It's incongruous to say a multimillionaire can spend as much on his own campaign as he wants, but you can only give $2,300. His free speech rights are different from yours, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. It's absurd.

The only way a challenger can compete with the built-in advantages of incumbency is to spend money.

We need more spending on elections. Most people don’t even know who their congressman is—don’t even know the name or their party… [There] is a lack of relevant information.

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.

It's important not to limit the amount of their own money that candidates can spend, but to give other people access to enough money to run competitive races.

All the spending is an amplifier. If your message dos not resonate with enough people, spending on its own doesn’t maker s difference.

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.

Silence the voices of some in order to hear the voices of others. Sometimes there is no other way.

In Canada we have limits on campaign spending and public funding of campaigns. This makes it easier for people [candidates] who don't have access to huge amounts of money.

I do not believe wealthy candidates should spend vast resources in their own campaigns.

Not only the candidate should not be required, he should not be permitted, to incur any but a limited and trifling expense for his election.

I took and received campaign donations under the existing laws.

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.

One of the greatest challenges of democracies today is the question of financing campaigns. It's a tremendous challenge. Obviously I think the solution is to have the governments pay for all the campaigns and not to have any private contributions.

Congress keeps outwitting its rules.