Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

This is government's primary function - to keep us safe - and when large percentages in America don't feel safe, they start asking: What am I paying my taxes for? What is government all about?

I'm not sure we will have every single Democrat ... but we want a large number of Republicans to be able to vote for this bill because we think that will encourage the House not only to move forward but to pass a bill.

[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.

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.

I think on this issue more than any other we're going to see sort of a bipartisan longing to get something done, and hopefully you're not going to find the fisticuffs that you would find on lots of other issues. I think you'll be able to glean a sense of progress without us revealing the specifics.

I support the death penalty for the kingpin, the guy at the top, but I don't think you should throw a drug offender in jail for five years, and let a mugger out after a year.