Stephen Farnsworth Interests Quotations

There's no question that special interests get their money's worth - either in Washington or Richmond. For ordinary citizens, that means that somebody else is at the front of the line when the government is lawmaking.

The truth is that it is profitable for private interests to give things to lawmakers. And if it weren't, they wouldn't give them. If it were not profitable for them to put some of their resources in the pockets of lawmakers, they wouldn't do it.

The full-disclosure system has an advantage in that people have a sense of what their lawmakers are getting. But the wide-ranging ability of lawmakers to receive gifts from private interests is not something that goes in the direction of good government.