When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think we have to look at the whole way campaigns are financed. The No. 1 problem is PAC and special-interest money.
All elections revolve around and are often resolved by who raises the most money. That's unfair. I'd like to see that process changed, but it seems once you win and get to Congress, that doesn't happen.
Presidential money is almost like the housing bubble. It's growing at such an astronomical rate, you think it can't get any bigger.
Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect.
Look, Congress has allocated more money to finance the upcoming Iraqi elections than it has for the American elections. There's something wrong with that.
Well I think money has been going into political campaigns for a very long time.
Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.
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.
A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.
There isn't a political price to be paid yet for doing nothing. People need to get upset with President Bush. People need to get upset with their Congressmen.