It's a shame that we have to use whatever leverage we have in Congress to get the president to deal with the biggest problem confronting our future. And that's our excessive spending.

I've said repeatedly publicly, and other members have, that until you adjust the eligibility for entitlements, do things like raising the age for Medicare for future beneficiaries. Not for those currently receiving or those about to receive. Have serious means testing for high income people. You know Warren Buffett's always complaining about not paying enough taxes. And what I'm complaining about is we're paying for his Medicare. We ought not to be providing these kinds of benefits for millionaires and billionaires.

The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law.

The new troops in Iraq need to be Iraqi troops.

If you've got a brand new administration coming into office you want to have, at the very least, a national security team in place on day one.

Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition.

What I said to the members [of Congress] who hoped they would be chairmen: let's don't have that problem. Be thinking now about legislation that you have, preferably that enjoys some Democratic support because we certainly didn't think we were going to have 60 and we don't.