There's one big difference between me and the others - I won't take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy. I'll use the bulk of the surplus to secure Social Security far into the future to keep our promise to the greatest generation.

Efforts to bring about democracy have hit a wall and are going backwards.

We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies.

And the people who live in the southern part of my state do not have a secure environment. To wit, there are signs that the government put up that say, "Warning. You are in a drug smuggling area and a human smuggling area."

The way you have bipartisan negotiations, you sit down across the table, as we did with Ted Kennedy, as I've done with many other members, and you say, 'OK, here's what I want, here's what you want. We'll adhere to your principles, but we'll make concessions.'

The first pork-barrel bill that crosses my desk, I'm going to veto it and make the authors of those pork-barrel items famous all over America.

I think we need to address greenhouse gas emissions. But I try to get involved in issues where I see a legislative result... So I just leave the issue alone because I don't see a way through it, and there are certain fundamentals, for example nuke power, that people on the left will never agree with me on. So why should I waste my time when I know the people on the left are going to reject nuclear power?