Climate change and dependence on foreign oil are problems that won't go away on their own. Tabling plans to deal with them doesn't make it easier for companies to plan and invest; it makes it harder.

The very first email I got [was] from a women's group saying 'We don't want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.'

If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that's going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward 20, 30 years is government spending on healthcare.

Making labor less expensive helps firms hire people.

Raising the minimum wage, as President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address, tends to be more popular with the general public than with economists.

I think something that forces financial institutions to write down underwater mortgages, I think, would be a sensible thing to do.

In the four decades after World War II, manufacturing jobs paid more than other jobs for given skills. But that is much less true today. Increased international competition has forced American manufacturers to reduce costs. As a result, the pay premium for low-skilled workers in manufacturing is smaller than it once was.