There's bound to be a recovery in [capital spending] sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it.

With all due respect to Speaker Hastert, trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea.

The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House. You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest.

There's bound to be a recovery in [capital spending] sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it.

It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street.

The conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. I think especially since the establishment of Fox News, which has created an echo chamber in which people just hear the same ideas repeated ad infinitum. And you know, it's just basic advertising, basically. You hear the same idea over and over again. Or you can call it propaganda if you like.

The break for me was the Medicare drug benefit in 2003. It's just grossly expensive, bad policy. After that, I no longer gave them the benefit of the doubt and started seeing the glass as half-empty.