When BP was not moving fast enough on claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a fund - managed by an independent third party - to help all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the spill.

I know many of you are hurting and angry about the economy, and I don't blame you. It's the worst economy since the Great Depression. When consumers can't buy and businesses won't expand for lack of customers, the government has to be the purchaser and employer of last resort. We learned that in the Great Depression, but Republicans obviously didn't - and they've blocked every jobs program I've offered.

There are some exceptions: Chicago, my hometown, in particular. But overall in the country this is a much safer place than it used to be.

There is no shame in confusion or fear. "There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. . . . It was the silence that betrayed us."

Our tears are not enough. Our words and our prayers are not enough. If we really want to honor these twelve men and women, if we really want to be a country where we can go to work and go to school and walk our streets free from senseless violence, without so many lives being stolen by a bullet from a gun, then we're gonna have to change. We're gonna have to change.

Since I've been in the Senate, is that my work with people like Tom Coburn on opening up transparency in government, making sure that every dollar the federal government spends that's out there - that that's all posted on a searchable database on the Internet.

I continue to believe when I said in Hanover, that the E.U. remains one of the world's great political and economic achievements, and that those achievements should not be taken for granted.