We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

It's a shame that the president doesn't embrace the effort to reduce spending. None of us like using situations like the sequester or the debt ceiling or the operation of government to try to engage the president to deal with this.

Tiger Woods and John Edwards had a better year than the stimulus bill.

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.

I know how it feels when you're coming into a new situation, that the other guys won the election.

I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this - it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.

As the leader of the Republicans what I'm telling that we elected the president to be president. It's time for him to step up to the plate and lead us in the direction of reducing our excessive spending.