It is time to do away with work place policies that belong in a Mad Men episode.

So I'm not proposing anything radical. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton. Back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot. ... At the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses -- not when so many folks are just trying to get by.

Our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments - as opposed to ordinary citizens - around the world, in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation does. We will not apologize simply because our services may be more effective.

There is no doubt that thanks to the steps that we took early on to rescue our economy and to rebuild it on a new foundation, we are entering into the new year with new confidence that America is coming back.

Just like I described in health care, yeah, somebody comes in, they got new ideas, maybe ideas that are completely opposite of my ideas. Maybe some of it goes, maybe some of that progress goes back. Maybe they think of some things we didn't think of, and so in some other areas - we can learn something.

I remember having meetings with Republican senators who initially had been trying to engage [Obamacare] but saw that the politics of 'no' were growing inside the Republican Party.

There are times where I've made mistakes or our administration hasn't always aligned ourselves with the values we need to align ourselves with. It's a work of constant improvement.