Quotes About Politics

Now, the typical way you make good things happen in Washington is you find a bunch of wealthy companies who agree with you.

The Republicans are wrong in thinking that the rich create jobs. In reality, many of the richest Americans have been investing in efficiency innovations rather than to create jobs. And the Democrats are wrong, because growth won't happen if they distribute the wealth of the wealthy to everyone else.

The privileged have become more wealthy, while people from disadvantaged backgrounds have had their opportunities to get on and move up closed off. That's the Tory way.

Since FDR's New Deal, corporations and wealthy families have been non-stop finding new ways to get tax breaks, deregulation and entitlements from the government.

The extremely wealthy have disproportionate influence on policies that impact us all. This corrupts our politics and leads to poorer people being denied the economic opportunity to flourish in life.

Because a lot of people are hurting economically and being shafted by the very wealthy, it's been possible here in the United States of America to organize them and persuade them that to elect a nincompoop like Donald Trump is actually in their best interest. When clearly it isn't.

President Reagan preached 'trickle down economics' but naively did not reckon on the fact that the wealthy would only care about getting more for themselves instead of caring about helping those with less.

A lot of organizations have pointed out that under public financing systems, you see a lot more candidates of color and a lot more women. But you also see the power base behind these candidates is more representative and far less exclusively wealthy.

Despite broad public support, raising the minimum wage is always difficult owing to the disproportionate influence that wealthy firms and donors have in Congress.

Even tax breaks that are supposed to help the middle class too often skew toward the wealthy. Consider the mortgage interest deduction. While political leaders in both parties have long considered it untouchable, it actually helps those at the top of the income scale far more than those at the bottom.

The whole process of getting licenses to broadcast, which took place decades ago, was done behind closed doors by powerful lobbies, and wealthy commercial interests got all the licenses with no public input, no congressional input for that matter.

Part of the problem is voters know relatively little about Romney. And some of what they know about him complicates his task: Romney has a history of flip-flopping on issues, he's extraordinarily wealthy, and he can be tone-deaf about what moves voters. He just doesn't seem comfortable in his skin.

I think that's most unfortunate about our Democratic system, that you're confining it to people who are either very wealthy in their own right or have capacity to gain access to large amounts of money.

On the show, we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables; we are not trying to get people to become Democrats. We are basically trying to encourage people to get involved with public life so that politics isn't left to the wealthy and privileged.

You don't have to be wealthy to run for mayor. I'm a Green Party candidate running for mayor and I'm being taken seriously.

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

For any politician who didn't enter office a wealthy man, nothing says 'I take bribes' like a Rolex watch.

In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share... Not one Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job killer.

Crony capitalism is alive and well: the big are bigger, the wealthy are getting wealthier because, with a very large powerful complicated government, which is what we have and which Democrats want more of, only the big, the powerful, the wealthy and the well connected can survive.

There are some really wealthy hedge fund billionaires in San Francisco who have pledged a lot of money for Democratic candidates to argue for cap and trade and carbon tax and all these things.

The wealthy are doing just fine in the Obama economy.

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 are plenty of examples of very wealthy people who have run for office and failed, certainly in Illinois.

Donald Trump has shown no interest in working toward increasing the minimum wage, no interest in doing anything but immigrant baiting, no interest in doing anything but filling the swamp with a band of billionaires who are simply trying to help the wealthy.