Top 35 Peter Schweizer Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.”4.”

— Peter Schweizer

2. “Those who wonder why the American tax code is so complex, convoluted, and constantly changing fail to appreciate what a wonderful tool it is for extortion.”

— Peter Schweizer

3. “The law dictates how much politicians can collect in campaign contributions, limits their ability to make money on the side, and requires the disclosure of those contributors. Hopefully, politicians are also limited to some extent by their conscience. A sense of decency and good judgment ought to prevent politicians on both sides of the aisle from engaging in certain transactions – even if they think they can get away with it.”

— Peter Schweizer

4. “Biden was remarkably candid in that interview about raising money and his willingness to “prostitute” himself to do it. “You run the risk of deciding whether or not you’re going to prostitute yourself to give the answer you know they want to hear in order to get funded to run for that office,” he explained. “I went to the big guys for the money. I was ready to prostitute myself in the manner in which I talk about it, but what happened was they said, ‘Come back when you’re 40, son.’ ”16.”

— Peter Schweizer

5. “Elizabeth Warren’s son-in-law appears to have financial ties to the Iranian government.”

— Peter Schweizer

6. “Washington has been using tax extenders to extort donations for more than thirty years.”

— Peter Schweizer

7. “Machiavelli declared that it was better to be feared than loved as a leader, but you did not want to be hated. Hatred led to conspiracy. And conspiracy, he warned, could bring down governments.”

— Peter Schweizer

8. “What if politics is really largely about fund-raising and making money?”

— Peter Schweizer

9. “Outside interests, from labor unions to large corporations, are influencing and distorting our government in the search for favorable policies.”

— Peter Schweizer

10. “Politicians spend so much time raising money because that is how you win elections.”

— Peter Schweizer

11. “During the Obama presidency, Frank Biden’s charter schools received millions of dollars in federal grants.”

— Peter Schweizer

12. “Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and a lot more to do with accessing money and favors. As we will see, bills and regulations are often introduced not to effect policy change, but as vehicles for shaking down people for those money and favors.”

— Peter Schweizer

13. “Eliminating politicians’ ability to raise money while in session would force them to devote their time exclusively to their job: lawmaking.”

— Peter Schweizer

14. “It is important to note that this deal was with the Chinese government – not with a Chinese company, which means that the Chinese government and the son of the vice president were now business partners.”

— Peter Schweizer

15. “Even if nothing illegal occurred, one has to wonder about the political judgment involved. Surely the mere appearance of selling American power and influence to foreign interests should be enough to cause a former US president – and a possible future one – to steer well clear of such potentially.”

— Peter Schweizer

16. “The Clintons are perhaps the most politically sophisticated public figures of their generation. They know how things work in the corridors of power and around the world; they know that foreign governments are trying to.”

— Peter Schweizer

17. “In his first eight years on the global lecture circuit, Bill had never been paid to speak in Nigeria. But once Hillary was appointed secretary of state, he booked two of his top three highest-paid speeches ever by traveling to Nigeria, pulling in a whopping $700,000 each.69.”

— Peter Schweizer

18. “Ostensibly designed for the benefit of the Haitian.”

— Peter Schweizer

19. “Complexity is a useful and lucrative method of legal extortion for politicians.”

— Peter Schweizer

20. “But the problem is not just with accumulated power, but also with those who seek it. As scientist and author David Brin pointedly noted, “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.”

— Peter Schweizer

21. “Washington has been using tax extenders to extort donations for more than thirty years. Lobbyists have likened the tax extenders ploy to Lucy pulling the football away from poor Charlie Brown in the last second.”

— Peter Schweizer

22. “In short, this is corruption by proxy. It is essentially a form of “political arbitrage,” where friends and family members of powerful political figures have positioned themselves to serve as conduits or middle men between those seeking influence and those who possess political power.”

— Peter Schweizer

23. “As Fortune puts it in an eyebrow-raising sentence, the Clinton Foundation is “a new turn in philanthropy, in which the lines between not-for-profits, politics, and business tend to blur.”5.”

— Peter Schweizer

24. “In Washington, it is far more important to be feared than loved.”

— Peter Schweizer

25. “Solving problems and settling issues is good lawmaking, but it’s not lucrative. It is gridlock, confusion, and rehashing fights that create streams of income – like an annuity – for the Permanent Political Class.”

— Peter Schweizer

26. “A one-star Army general with forty years of service can earn up to $143,000 per year in basic pay. A freshman congressman starts out at $174,000. If he becomes Speaker of the House, he can pull down $223,500.1.”

— Peter Schweizer

27. “The assumption is that we need to protect politicians from outside influences. But how about protecting ourselves from the politicians?”

— Peter Schweizer

28. “FBI investigations alone will never take corruption out of politics. They take too much effort, and they attack the problem serially, one target at a time.”

— Peter Schweizer

29. “Other victims of the fraud included several public and union pension plans.102 Although Hunter Biden was not charged in the case, his fingerprints were all over Burnham. The “legitimacy” that his name and political status as the vice president’s son lent to the plan was brought up repeatedly in the trial.103.”

— Peter Schweizer

30. “The reality is that most of what happens in American politics is transactional. People look for ways to influence those in power by throwing money in their direction.”

— Peter Schweizer

31. “Nine out of ten times in the House of Representatives, and eight out of ten times in the Senate, the candidate who spends the most money wins.”

— Peter Schweizer

32. “Raising money is what helps an ambitious member of the House rise in the ranks far more than ideas or competence.”

— Peter Schweizer

33. “They were directed to hire certain well-connected advisers and lobbyists in Washington. “You hear about bribery in China,” says Herbold. “They have nothing on us. We are just more sophisticated about it.”

— Peter Schweizer

34. “Extorting money in the form of campaign contributions is not simply about getting reelected. Many politicians aggressively fund-raise even though they face little or no opposition for reelection. Politicians have discovered a creative way to transfer donations into subsidies designed to benefit their lifestyles.”

— Peter Schweizer

35. “So while the Obama administration was laying out the challenge posed by China in the global minerals race, the son of the vice president and a confidant of the secretary of state were invested in deals that would help Beijing win that resource race.”

— Peter Schweizer

36. “Despite Bernie’s outspoken attacks on corporate America, the Sanderses became quite comfortable investing in those same companies with their growing investment portfolio.”

— Peter Schweizer

37. “Hiring a lobbyist aligned with a powerful politician is more important than hiring a lobbyist with a certain expertise or experience. Hiring a former staff member or family member is better still.”

— Peter Schweizer

38. “According to Waggoner, the trouble is that complicated laws enrich those who make the laws while making the rest of society poorer.”

— Peter Schweizer

39. “Sometimes, politicians will literally offshore corruption by moving the location of the deal, the entities, and the players involved, abroad. Other times, they offshore corruption metaphorically by shifting the cronyism out of their own hands and into those of their children or a close friend to leverage from afar and avoid detection.”

— Peter Schweizer