What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing.

I am excited about focusing full-time on talking about my job-creation agenda and building a new economy for Washington state. We have a great chance to seize our own destiny, build our own industries, and create our own technological revolutions right here at home.

A lot of people do not think of forests as a health issue, but we have found out that is where our clean water comes from, from the forests.

But most importantly, we can all be donors. It does not matter how old you are, your race, where you live; all of us can give the gift of life.

I'm sure that in the fullness of time we'll learn that one or more of these seemingly promising technologies were dead ends. And that's the nature of innovation, and that's why we should spread our bets; we should not put our eggs in any one basket. Some of these will be grand successes, some of them will be average, and some of them will be abject failures.

The 1st Congressional District contains almost half of the biotech and biomedical companies in Washington, and my job often allows me to meet the people responsible for this exciting research.

I would like to see whoever is our next president dedicate a significant part of their inaugural address to this challenge. We have to ignite the nation's energies and passions on this to make this happen. I think we do need the same kind of inspiration we had from Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961.