As a Democrat, one of the things that frustrates me the most is there are a lot of times we just don't get in the fight. We ask pretty please if we can have things or we make the argument for why it is the best thing to do, and then wait patiently for the other side to agree to come along. We negotiate. We start our opening position by negotiating.

When conservatives talk about opportunity, they mean opportunities for the rich to get richer, for the powerful to get more powerful.

Say good-bye to the Affordable Care Act. That means 20 million people who lose their health insurance, just like that.

Right now, with millions of Americans still out of work, and struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the great depression, with 40 million Americans dealing with student loans, with millions of people working full-time at minimum wage and still living in poverty, with the big banks getting bigger and the workers getting poorer, and seniors struggling to make ends meet, Republicans in Washington have decided the most important thing for them to focus on is how to deny women access to birth control.

The credit card companies have put the loan sharks out of business.

Refinancing won't fix everything that's broken with our [American] higher education system. We've got to bring down the cost of college. And we need more accountability for how schools spend federal dollars.

That is especially important as more young people must take on huge debt loads to go to college.