To honor our national promise to our veterans, we must continue to improve services for our men and women in uniform today and provide long overdue benefits for the veterans and military retirees who have already served.

Teachers are our greatest public servants; they spend their lives educating our young people and shaping our Nation for tomorrow.

It matters not what your individual position is on either war we are currently prosecuting - in Iraq or Afghanistan - certainly we can all agree protesting at military funerals is a cruel and unnecessary hardship on our military families during their most difficult hour.

For my constituents, owning a home is the culmination of many years of hard work and the realization of the American Dream. At no time should a local entity take those years of hard work solely to increase their tax revenue.

Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.

As a father and grandfather, I have witnessed firsthand the joy of new life entering the world. I know the pain and apprehension that goes along with premature births and birth defects.

This Congress has promised all manner of border security and port security to the tune of billions of dollars... yet we have - to date - funded our promises for port security at only $900 million. That's quite a distance between what we say and what we actually do.