$100,000 donors buy access to Congress and the White House. We believe it's long past time to clean up Washington.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the influence of money in politics and the need for reform.
William J. Clinton's quote emphasizes the significant power that wealthy donors possess in influencing government decisions and access to political leaders, particularly in Congress and the White House. It calls for a necessary reform in the political system to reduce the impact of money in politics and advocate for a cleaner, more transparent governance process.
In practice
Using this quote in a political debate to emphasize the need for campaign finance reform.
You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
For too long we've been told about 'us' and 'them.' Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that 'they' are the problem, not 'us.' But there can be no 'them' in America. There's only us.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.
I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
Using these unnamed sources, if done properly, carefully and fairly, provides more accountability in government.
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'
Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today's political scene.
There may be circumstances in which damaging our relationship with countries over human rights is counterproductive and the benefits to human rights may be very small because of our limited capacity to enforce our stance. That was the dilemma the United States faced after Tiananmen Square.
We used to play marbles for keeps. If you lost, you lost. It is the same way with politics, but not everybody knows this.
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
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