I'm not going to critique the president's every utterance, but I do think America is exceptional. America is different. We don't operate in any way the Russians do. I think there's a clear distinction here that all Americans understand, and no, I would not have characterized it that way.

We [Democrats] are looking for things that we think would make a difference, improve the country, and enjoy some bipartisan support.

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.

We all know that Social Security is one of this country's greatest success stories in the 20th century.

I honestly thought we wouldn't hold the U.S. Senate. I thought we'd come up short and I didn't think President Donald Trump had a chance of winning. Given my expectations, doubly exciting because I thought we'd come up short on the Senate. We had a lot of exposure. That was really something. But it never occurred to me that he might be able to win as well.

If you believe one of the biggest problems confronting the country is overregulation by this administration, the single most effective way to begin to rein in the aggressive regulators, who in my view have done great damage to this economy, is in the bills that fund the regulators.

The bill that job creators and out-of-work Americans need us to pass is the one that ensures taxes won't go up - one that says Americans and small-business owners won't get hit with more bad news at the end of the year.