A respected health economist said that these plans would cost a trillion dollars more a year.

We need to make it very clear - whether it's Russia, China, Iran or anybody else - the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sector information or our public-sector information.

The American taxpayer should not be treated more shabbily than debtors from other nations and we should be encouraging other nations to help rebuild Iraq's economy.

I've never seen people as physically distraught as the Bush administration team was because of what was happening to the economy. I personally believe that the steps that President Obama took saved the economy. He doesn't get the credit he deserves for taking some very hard positions. But it was a terrible recession. So now we've dug ourselves out of it, we're standing, but we're not yet running.

I have many, many old friends, and I always think that it`s important, when you get into politics, to have friends you had before you were in politics and to understand what`s on their minds.

I support moving toward more clean, renewable energy as quickly as we can, because I think we [America] can be the 21st century clean energy superpower and create millions of new jobs and businesses.

There are 4 billion cell phones in use today. Many of them are in the hands of market vendors, rickshaw drivers, and others who've historically lacked access to education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler, and we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and give them a freedom from want.