"We don’t need a lobby reform package…we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system."

Molly Ivins in The Progressive
March 2006

Q: "Why does America no longer produce great leaders?"

A: "The whole process of running for office today is making some of our best people not want to enter the fray, partly because of the exposure of private lives, partly because of the necessity of raising so much cash."

Doris Kearns Goodwin in Esquire Magazine
February 2006

"We'd be a lot better off to admit we've allowed or fostered a system that's conducive to corruption."

Rep. Jeff Flake
January 10, 2006

"I'm going to talk at length about the need for us to rethink not just lobbying but the whole process of elections, incumbency protection and the way in which the system has evolved...which is very different from the way the American system is supposed to be like. I think Abramoff is just part of a large pattern that has got to be rethought."

Newt Gingrich, Former House Speaker (R - Ga.)

"The poor don't have lobbyists on K Street."

EJ Dionne on Meet the Press
December 11, 2005

"If I can raise the money, I'm running. It's a lot of money. I don't know if I can do it."

Senator Joe Biden on Meet the Press when asked if he would run for President in 2008.
November 27, 2005

What's not to like about being a member of Congress? Dialing for dollars is even more unpopular than the endless shuttling between the member's home base and the Capitol. "Fundraising can be much more time-consuming than you like. It takes time from what you want to do," said Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine. "But there is no way around it. You have to make the phone calls." Those calls, he added, are a useful way to "hear what is on the minds" of contributors, both in his home district and around the nation. And most donors respond more positively to personal contact with a lawmaker than to a letter or a call from a staffer, Allen said. Fundraising can become "tedious," Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., agreed. "You are calling the same people over and over again. But you do it because you have to do it," said Linder, who was at the epicenter of the campaign-contribution world during his two years as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The National Journal
November 11, 2005

"It's not who has the better ideas. It's whoever has the money to get their message out there. There's a real element of unfairness."

Mario Cuomo
October 17, 2004

"I could spend my time talking with voters, not with big contributors. We were able to…campaign in a fundamentally different way." And once in office, "lobbyists were not swarming around me."

Janet Napolitano Governor of Arizona who won under a public funding system

"Bribery is the way the system works…The whole system is rotten. Money not only determines who is elected, it determines who runs for office…All of us have been corrupted by the process…We are the defenders of an elaborate influence-peddling scheme in which both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder."

Senator John McCain

"It's money! Money! Money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics."

Senator Robert Byrd, Dean of the Senate

"(Given the many functions the government pays for) it is difficult to single out any of a higher order than the conduct of elections at all levels to bring forth those persons desired by their fellow citizens to govern."

Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
1972