People who go to work every day and perform the services essential to keeping our economy functioning deserve to live above the poverty level.

Who owns the assets of our Nation? Increasingly, foreign interests own our assets, and we owe them money. No wonder people think our country is headed in the wrong direction. It is.

A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class.

America is becoming more and more dependent upon imports from foreign manufacturers than we are exports from our country in all fields: in appliances, in clothing, even food. This year America may become for the first time in its history a net food importer.

I grew up in a family where our mother made our clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned skills.

We have seen voters denied their rights in recent elections as they have been incorrectly purged from lists, their absentee votes not counted, and voting machine integrity and security not assured.

Without a doubt, first thing we should do is clean up our fiscal house, and that starts with balancing our budgets and digging out of this red ink. We cannot expect to continue in this fashion and remain the leader of the free world.