My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.

I'm going to be working the next 25 or 30 years. People like me, if we want, number one, for no benefit reductions for our parents and our grandparents, number two, for the system to survive and exist for us, and, more importantly, number three, for the system to exist for us children, we are going to have to make reforms to that system.

It's not in our nature. Americans have never been a people that drive through a nice neighborhood and say, 'Oh, I hate the people who live in these nice houses.'

I believe that there are barriers, educational barriers, cultural barriers, societal barriers, that are keeping people from accessing the promise of a vibrant free enterprise economy.

I think there are many in the Democratic Party that want immigration to be unsolved issue at least for the time being, because it's more useful as a campaign issue than it is as a solved issue.

I haven't thought about aspirations for the future. I like politics, I like serving the public, and we'll see if God offers us another opportunity in the future.

...you're never going to have a legal immigration system that works if you grant amnesty.