Quotes About Lobbying

The reason Big Pharma spends so much on small gifts as well as the big ones is well known to marketers, lobbyists, and social psychologists: being given a gift evokes an implicit desire to reciprocate.

Well, the role of money in politics is pretty corrupting right now.

There is this concept of politics as a dirty game. It's a difficult game, but it doesn't have to be dirty. I think this is what we need to bring to politics. I think politics around the world has very often been captured by big interests - 'lobbies' they call them in the States.

Our Congressmen are the finest body of men money can buy.

Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.

No party in the US can hope to rule without the support of Jewish money and Jewish power in the media and academia.

Way back in 2000, the EPA was poised, and, in fact, had drafted a rule, to specially regulate pollution - water pollution and other types of pollution - from power plants, but the energy industry pushed back pretty significantly.

It's just unbelievable to me that the National Rifle Association has so much power.

On the McLaughlin Report, August 26, 1990: 'There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the middle East, the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.

I've made it clear that I'm not taking special interest PAC money or accepting donations from lobbyists - ever. I want to represent the interests of the citizens.

It is hard to imagine any single special interest trying to buy an office without a motive.

We need to take politics out of health care. Congress will cave to pretty much any special interest on the subject.

If I am elected President, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C.

Until we make campaigns affordable, then we're going to have too many members of Congress out rattling the cup with special interest groups.

While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.

Meanwhile, as Francis Fukuyama has argued, the very legitimacy of democratic politics is being corroded because 'interest groups . . . are able to effectively buy politicians with campaign contributions and lobbying', a process that he dubs 'repatrimonialization

The National Rifle Association has an extensive enemies list, and I am, frankly, insulted that I am not on it.

I've always been endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

In 1971 about 175 big companies had full-time lobbyists—that is, "public affairs offices"—in Washington. By 1978 five hundred did, and just four years later, in the second Reagan year, nearly 2,500 corporations employed Washington lobbyists.

Pig farmers complained to the Centers for Disease Control that the name "swine flu" might frighten people away from eating pork. They asked, to no avail, that the flu's name be changed to "New Jersey flu.

Many attempts have been made in the years since to adopt educational vouchers. With minor exceptions, no one has succeeded in getting a voucher system adopted, thanks primarily to the political power of the school establishment, more recently reinforced by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, together the strongest political lobbying body in the U.S.

In 2012 the NEA spent $18.1 million on political contributions (95 percent of it going to Democratic candidates) and another $5.9 million on lobbying. Without these payments it's very possible that politicians might finally stop pretending that ideas like tenure and seniority pay make sense for our kids.

Even though the Koch brothers' businesses put 4.4 million people at risk with pollutants, the Kochs have poured millions into lobbyists' coffers and political contributions to ensure their bottom line stays unchanged by the most basic safety precaution.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.