The classic example I've used - I'm sure you've heard me say it before - was Mark Begich in Alaska who was here for a full six years and never had a roll call vote on an amendment on the floor of the Senate, which Dan Sullivan tells me he used on virtually a daily basis. So the notion that protecting all of your members from votes is a good idea politically, I think, has been pretty much disproved by the recent [Barack Obama] election.

Americans don't think we should be raising taxes on anybody, especially in the middle of a recession.

We didn't make much progress on the country's agenda. And in my view it's because the Senate basically hadn't done much of anything, with a couple of exceptions, for the last four years [of Barack Obama's presidency]. And that's going to change.

I think it's not just Republicans who would like to see the Senate run differently. I think there are a reasonable number of Democrats as well.

More young people believe they'll see a U.F.O. than that they'll see their own Social Security benefits.

We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare... it was a very large issue in the campaign. And, the reconciliation process does present an opportunity and we're reviewing that to see what's possible through reconciliation.

79 senators, including that great conservative Elizabeth Warren, said they didn't like the medical device tax, so we will go at that law - which in my view is the single worst piece of legislation passed in the last half century - in every way that we can.