The countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow.

When the economy is still struggling, putting people back to work, finding ways to spur economic activity, ultimately can help to reduce the structural deficits and debts that countries experience.

I think there is nothing wrong with instituting policies that say that harassment of any form, whether it comes through the Internet or whether it happens to you face to face, is unacceptable; that we've got zero tolerance when it comes to sexual harassment, we have zero tolerance when it comes to harassing people because of their sexual orientation, because of their race, because of their ethnicity.

The United States has to go through structural reforms in terms of improving our education system or revamping our infrastructure or, you know, looking at some regulations that weren't properly controlling excesses on Wall Street.

Affirmative action is not going to be the long-term solution to the problems of race in America, because, frankly, if you've got 50 percent of African-American or Latino kids dropping out of high school, it doesn't really matter what you do in terms of affirmative action. Those kids aren't going to college.

A budget is more than just a series of numbers on a page; it is an embodiment of our values.

It requires enormous energy for us to cut the African American uninsured rate by a third. A lot of scars.