The success of our economy shouldn't determine the success of our schools

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.

I ask you: turn a deaf ear to the special interests. Let politics stand down for a while. don't waste anytime thinking about future elections until we've done our jobs here.

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.

You elected government officials to make decisions and it's about time they started making good ones

Change makes us confront the great unknown. It introduces different things into our lives. Different places. Different ideas. Different people. It's all hard to accept at times, and change can often be a little scary. But if there's one fact that I've learned from raising a family, from running several businesses, from serving in Congress and now as Governor, it's that nothing has ever grown without changing.

God looked down on this country because this country was founded on the rock and that rock was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And when the storms came and the rains came, the rock, it did not move. But over the last 15 or 20 years, something began to erode.