I am a small-town girl.

There are people who have legitimate concerns about false accusations and the impact that can have on a young person's life when they have been falsely accused. Kirsten [Gillibrand] and I are not unaware that that is an issue we need to be concerned about, and that's why we have made changes in the legislation to address not just the rights of the victim, the accuser, but also of the accused.

The price of a college education should never include a 1 in 5 chance of being sexually assaulted.

I've been very independent from the day I arrived in Washington.

The notion that the campus has its hands tied if a woman is not willing to go to the police, if the woman is only willing to go so far as, "I just don't want to see him in my dorm anymore," is ridiculous. If that's as far as she's willing to go, then we need to accommodate that. And a university needs to be able to accommodate it.

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.

I don't think Democrats are ever going to get excited about cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts to wealthy people. I just don't think that's the direction we should be going in our country. The 1 percent's doing very well in America. They don't need more help. But Medicaid does.