Mary Boyle Quotations

While lobbyists are not allowed to pay for a trip, the parent company can. Which is confusing, because the lobbyist can come along.

Basically we think it's a pathetic piece of legislation. This does nothing to curb the 'anything goes' culture in Washington.

People are scared. Both parties are tripping over themselves.

Part of what the K Street Project was about was making lobbyists indispensable to Congress because of the money they were raising.

We are really disappointed. For Congress to produce any kind of credible reform, they need an enforcement mechanism.

We will miss him. He brought energy, creativity and vision to our board for the last eight years, as well as a sense of humor.

We don't want members of Congress to just sit behind their desks all the time.

We don't want members of Congress sitting behind their desk all day long.

Voinovich is a good-government guy. He is an ally with us on a number of issues.

There will definitely be reform. The question is, how far will it go and how substantive is it?

It was about rules that were broken and there was no enforcement for breaking them whatsoever.

The states are way out ahead of Congress on this. This is not some kind of crazed, untested idea. This is going on in the states. ... It's bringing accountability to state government and that's what we need here.

Our concern is that this heightened sensitivity is short-lived. And I think it could be unless reforms include credible, strong enforcement of new rules and regulations.

The bottom line is that the system is broken and people are pushing against it looking for every single loophole. If you address the heart of the problem with public financing, you wouldn't have this constant end-run around the rules.

This gives them an incredible advantage over their challengers.

This happens everywhere. There are tens of thousand of state legislators and state officials. Elected officials like many other people have financial problems at home. The difference is that they are held at a higher standard because they hold the public trust.

A lot of what was going on was already against the rules. There just wasn't any enforcement.

They're buying face time with the lawmaker. And they're not regular Joe constituents. They're lobbyists with an agenda. It's an opportunity in a nice, picturesque setting to get this kind of intimate access that you wouldn't get if you trooped up to Capitol Hill and knocked on a congressman's door.

Congress has kind of proven it's not capable of policing itself.

Its time has come on the congressional level too.

The ultimate solution is public financing of campaigns. All this is based on the constant quest for campaign cash that members of Congress are always on. If you get rid of that, members of Congress will be much less susceptible.