I remember when my father passed away, we drove the funeral procession past the bank so he could say one last goodbye. That's how much the bank meant to my father.

Mark Kirk: Lied about going to war. Opposed middle class tax cuts. And said unemployment's not that big an issue.

I remember when my father passed away, we drove the funeral procession past the bank so he could say one last goodbye. That's how much the bank meant to my father.

One of the biggest problems out there that I hear from my friends in the business community is that there's no lending, that it's tough to get a loan today.

I can tell you that when I travel the state, when I talk to people, they are really struggling, in a very real way. They're losing their jobs, they're losing their homes, they're dealing with financial challenges.

But if, if you take a look at what would have happened, I mean, do we need to see soup lines down the street to figure out what would have happened? We avoided - and all economists will tell you that millions of jobs were saved because of the Recovery Act, and we avoided a second Great Depression. That, that is a reality.

We need to focus on green jobs: solar, wind, geothermal, biomass.There's so many opportunities. But other countries like China are getting ahead of the curve.