The debt they ran up in the first year of the Obama administration is bigger than the last four years of the Bush combined.

It just doesn't occur to an American that someone else will solve their problems. Americans take pride in solving problems for themselves. And if we fail, we get back up and try again. It's what we do. It's who we are.

The worst experience any majority can have is that you convene and you look around and nothing's ready to go.

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.

I've often wished we had more women in the Senate.

For everybody who thinks it's warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn't.

I think there were two messages in last year's election. One is pretty obvious. People were mad as hell at the president [Barack Obama] - and wanted to send a message. We all got that. Our new members were also hearing, and I was hearing as well, that people didn't like the fact that the Congress was dysfunctional. Now they may have been confused about where the dysfunctionality was cause the president kept pointing to the House. Factually, that's not accurate. The dysfunction was in the Senate.