Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.

We ask for nothing more than the chance to blaze our own trail, and yet each of us is only here because somebody, somewhere, helped us find our path. That`s part of what makes America exceptional. We are family and we`ll do anything to help each other along the way.

I do not believe being gay or lesbian is a choice.

Black children, white children, Latino children. America is becoming more diverse, it's becoming more tolerant as a consequence there's more interactions between groups. There are going be tensions that arise.

Does that mean that all vestiges of past discrimination would be eliminated, that the income gap or the wealth gap or the education gap [between Afro-Americans and white] would be erased in five years or 10 years? Probably not, and so this is obviously a discussion we've had before when you talk about something like reparations.

I'll turn the page on a growing empire of classified information. We'll protect sources and methods, but we won't use sources and methods to hide the truth.

What used to be racial segregation now mirrors itself in class segregation, this great sorting (has) taken place. It creates its own politics. There are some communities where not only do I not know poor people, I don't even know people who have trouble paying the bills at the end of the month. I just don't know those people. And so there's less sense of investment in those children.