Press Releases

Democratic Presidential Candidates Reiterate Need for Reform During CNN Town Halls

Apr 23, 2019

During yesterday’s CNN town halls, Democratic presidential candidates continued to underscore their commitment to limiting the outsized influence of special interests, getting big money out of politics, and restoring power in our democracy back to the people.

See below for a roundup of presidential candidates making getting big money out of politics a key part of their message to voters last night:

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN:
If your ears are stuffed with money, it’s hard to hear. So the crisis hit in 2007-2008 and just took us down. The big question becomes, so what are you going to do going forward? And a lot of folks thought what we should do is just take care of the big financial institutions. My view was, we gotta put a cop on the beat to make sure that this never happens to working families again. So the idea I had, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I said I’m going to get in this fight.”

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS:
And something is equally wrong when we have a corrupt political system made even worse by this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires to spend unlimited sums of money to elect candidates who represent the wealthy and the powerful. So answer number one to your question. It’s a radical idea. Maybe not everybody agrees, but I happen to believe we should have a government that represents working families and not just the 1% and powerful corporations.”

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG:
“There are several problems in our economy’s relationship to our democracy right now. The biggest problem that I have with corporate America is the way that concentrations of wealth and corporate power have turned into concentrations of political power. And it’s one of the reasons why I think we need to act quickly to establish as a matter of principle that corporations do not equal people and that money does not equal speech. Some have said that within the framework of the constitution, you can’t draw those boundaries and that led to a decision that I think has been disastrous for our politics, which is the Citizens United decision. I don’t believe that the constitution says that. But if it does––if that’s going to be the direction that our federal judiciary takes going forward, then I think it’s necessary to formulate a constitutional amendment to clear this up once and for all. And I’m under no illusion that it’s possible overnight to get that reform. But I think most Americans actually agree that we need to get money out of politics.”

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