It is vital that we provide North Dakota's children with nutritionally sound diets. That means ensuring that they are getting plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and are developing good eating habits for their future.

Highway spending, which I think most everybody says is badly needed in this country, creates American jobs, and also makes America more competitive.

The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be to make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care.

The reality is no one knows how much it will cost us to wage war with Iraq.

I've had lengthy discussions with European farm leaders. It is clear they have an agricultural strategy to support their producers and gain dominance in world agricultural trade. They're gaining markets the old-fashioned way - they're buying them.

Reducing our dependence on foreign energy - that is critically important to America's economic future. Excellence in education - if we're not the best educated, we're not going to be the most powerful for very long.

America was founded on majority rule, not supermajority rule. Somehow, over the years, this has morphed into supermajority rule, and that changes things.