In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children's classrooms and in their future.

One person can make a difference. In fact, its not only possible for one person to make a difference, its essential that one person makes a difference. And believe it or not, that person is you.

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.

We must now view our problems as opportunities - historic opportunities to change the failed systems of the past and do what's right for our future.

The fight for reform comes down to a simple goal: giving our citizens the confidence that government serves the people first and the people only.

The opponents of my budget propose taking $200 million out of our classrooms and instead spending it on a larger school employee pay raise. Our focus should be on making sure our children come first.

I think you'd change Alabama fundamentally if in six years someone said, 'If you want the best education in America, you've got to live in Alabama.' you'd change economic development, change the image of this state, you'd offer these kids an opportunity they otherwise would never have had.