$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.
If we can't have a public debate because the information space is so polluted, or because people are afraid of the reactions of organized trolls, then we can't really have meaningful elections anymore, either.
Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.
We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight.
This legislation confronts the human truth that the need for clean water knows no borders, and proper management and intervention can be a currency for peace and international cooperation.
It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today.
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