We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum.

What we are going to do as Democrats is put together a really strong platform that focuses on jobs and economic issues.

The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair... As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol's physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.

If you talk privately to our tech companies, our pharmaceutical companies, our high-end manufacturing companies, the high end of America, where the good-paying jobs are, China is not letting them in unless China gets to steal their intellectual property in a company that`s 51 percent owned by the Chinese.

When Mitt Romney says he wants to reform the tax code, hold on to your wallets.

[Barack] Obama administration, the [George W.]Bush administration have done nothing. And as China has manipulated its currency, we`ve lost trillions of dollars of wealth and millions of good-paying jobs.

I feel very strongly that we need to change the way we do trade because it has been one of the major factors that lead to decline of middle class incomes.