I'm a human being. I'm not perfect.

Congress doesn't hate Congress.

I think what I'm trying to do, reform-wise, is completely consistent with conservative philosophy. It may not be consistent with some so-called conservatives who live in Washington and make their living like I used to.

You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that. But you can take him to a fundraising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fundraiser. And have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.

In the past two years, I've started the process of becoming a new man. I am much chastened and profoundly remorseful over the reckless and hurtful things I have done in my life, especially those which have brought me before you today.

I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying.

One of my personality defects, perhaps, is that I'm rather ADD, and I work on a bunch of things at once.