Republicans aren't cowards. Many will take the side of climate principle in a fair fight. But it is asking a lot of them to take a principled stand on climate when they don't see one corporate friend ready to help them.
— Sheldon Whitehouse
To be clear, I don't know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don't have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it's all smoke and no fire. But there's an awful lot of smoke.
The bottom line is this: A private company and/or its industry allies should not knowingly lie to the American people about the harms that are caused by its product.
If Republicans want to defend the rights of corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited, secret money in campaigns, then they should say so.
Fraud investigations punish those who lie, knowing that they are lying, intending to fool others, and do it for money. No one should be too big to answer for that conduct.
I am gravely concerned about climate change.
No one has a First Amendment right to lie to a federal agency in order to claim an improper tax status in order to avoid legal disclosure requirements on political spending and thereby receive undue tax benefits. That's a criminal false statement and possibly a fraud.
Is keeping Big Oil happy with subsidies from the American people more important than addressing our deficit? Should a billionaire who makes a multi-million-dollar gift to a museum receive more tax bang for his charitable buck than a middle-class family who gives to their local church?
Too many members of Congress seem willing to give corporate polluters, many of whom happen to be major political donors, a free pass to poison the air.
Health IT helps save lives now lost due to preventable medical errors, from incorrect diagnoses and needless infections to drug mix-ups and surgical mishaps.
The bottom line is that our kids deserve a brighter future. They deserve an opportunity to attend college, regardless of their wealth or class. And our economy needs an educated work force that can compete in the global race for jobs.
We must unequivocally reject any cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits.
At a time when the United States is handing out tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, corporate jet owners, and millionaires and billionaires, it is ludicrous that we would even be looking at Social Security and Medicare as a solution to our debt crisis.
Make your life your work, not your talk.
To a certain extent, platforms are platitudes that you test when you get to govern. You have to run those priorities up against the opposition and decide what's most important.
A lot of the Citizens United problem could be solved if we knew where the money came from for all these ads. The companies create these entities with fake names - like 'Citizens for Nice Puppies' - which means that the sources of the money are unaccountable.
If everyone on the Court always voted for the prosecution against the defendant, for the corporation against the plaintiffs, and for the government against the condemned, a vital spark of American democracy would be extinguished.
The dirty secret is that climate change is not really a partisan issue in Congress.
Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.
Climate change may not be the most important issue to every American, but strong majorities do consider it a major problem, and they aren't likely to take seriously a candidate who denies the science and who is plainly in the pocket of the polluters.
Citizens United is a disgrace of a decision, holding that corporate money is corporate speech and entitled to the same First Amendment protection as human speech. As a result, corporations now can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections - often in secret, without any public disclosure.
Consumers recognize, and don't like, corporate lying.
Every one of us deserves a voice that our president will hear.
It's pretty clear that Americans have a strong interest in knowing who's trying to influence their vote in elections.
Closing tax loopholes has to be part of the revenue equation.
Despite heated political debates on the future of our health care system, there is bipartisan agreement that health IT can be a powerful tool to transform and modernize the delivery of health care in our country. Health IT is about helping patients and their loved ones.
If the American people make their voices heard and put enough pressure on Congress, we can restore fairness in our economic system, do what's right for the middle class, and show that Congress can stand up to special interests.
Educating our children and giving them the skills they need to compete in a global economy is a smart investment in our country's future.
As a co-founder of the Defend Social Security Caucus in the Senate, you can count on me to continue to stand up for our seniors and fight any back door efforts to cut benefits.
Democrats need to stand strong against any efforts to cut benefits to Social Security and Medicare.
Citizens United provided unprecedented political weaponry to big special interests. My personal view was it was calculated to do that.
I think a lot of the people who feel out of step with contemporary society or feel that they've been left back economically or feel disaffected and are drawn to the Republican Party, they are looking for a news source that will tell them something they would like to hear and then is reassuring, emotionally rewarding, and confirming.
When I was sworn in, we had Republican-sponsored climate-change bills all over the place. You had John McCain running for President in 2008 on a strong climate platform. You could see American democracy actually starting to work at solving a difficult problem.
The Founding Fathers set up the American judiciary as a check on the excesses of the elected branches and as a refuge when those branches are corrupted or consumed by passing passions.
Talking to my Senate Republican colleagues about climate change is like talking to prisoners about escaping. The conversations are often private, even furtive.
Whatever the motivation of the 'Wall Street Journal' and other right-wing publications, it is clearly long past time for the climate denial scheme to come in from the talk shows and the blogosphere and have to face the kind of an audience that a civil RICO investigation could provide.
Millions upon millions of secret spending by the fossil fuel industry that was unleashed by the disastrous 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision - this money not only fuels the campaigns of many candidates; it also represents a threat to those who don't toe the polluter line on climate change.
The 'Wall Street Journal' is quite irate that I rank them with industry front groups and cranks denying climate change. But they have a record whenever industrial pollutants are involved. Look at the 'Journal''s commentary on acid rain, on the ozone layer, and on climate change.
I believe that the role of president of the United States is vastly different from the role of candidate and that the Donald Trump of the campaign will not succeed as president.
We are Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and none of the above. We are gay and straight. We are black, brown, white, and innumerable combinations. We are young and old, female and male, with and without disabilities, urban and rural, and liberal and conservative. Every one of us is an equal American.
We pay for power plant pollution through higher health costs.
We can reduce our deficit, and do it in a much more balanced way than sequestration, simply by fixing our tax code to get rid of needless giveaways.
Any patient who has a serious illness requiring multiple doctors understands the frustration of lost medical charts, repeated procedures, or having to share the same information over and over with different doctors and nurses.
Implementing the so-called 'Buffett Rule' would restore some badly needed fairness to our tax system.
I've met students across Rhode Island who rely on Pell Grants. They work hard, play by rules, and are doing everything they can to get the education they need for the jobs of tomorrow.
We cannot solve the deficit crisis on the back of our seniors. We need all Americans to pay their fair share.
We'll never move beyond oil until we stop rewarding oil companies with ridiculous taxpayer subsidies and start making them pay for the harm they cause our families and our planet.
When I deliver the message to a cross section of Rhode Island that democracy is broken because special interests have relentless power - which prevents politicians from compromising despite popular support on an issue - I don't have any pushback.
As a lawyer, as a former prosecutor, and as a son and grandson of foreign-service officers who tried to represent American democracy in foreign and dangerous places, the idea that this crowd of crooked fossil-fuel types is able to take over and run our democracy like we are a banana republic - I find that repellent.
A courtroom is supposed to be a place where the status quo can be disrupted - even upended - when the Constitution or laws may require, where the comfortable can be afflicted and the afflicted find some comfort, all under the shelter of the law.
