No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world.

No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to those who serve or have served in our countrys military, as well as to the families of those individuals. Whether protecting our freedoms in foreign fields or making contributions here at home, the value these men and women bring to the American workforce and our way of life is beyond measure.

Certainly there was the Affordable Care Act part, then unaccompanied children [there has been a surge of children entering the country illegally and without parents, particularly in Texas], and things like, we find smallpox in an NIH lab, after 50 years? Why didn't you find it, like, five weeks ago or three years ago? There was thing after thing. But the big ones were [dealing with] the Ebola [outbreak], the unaccompanied children. [It was] perhaps a bigger challenge than I had calculated on my yellow pad as I was thinking about this role.

Putting People First was progressivism revived, and at its best.

Can we have a conversation about the substance? That's what I welcome. We're happy to have those conversations if there are places where people think there can be improvements. We want competition in the system, so let's talk about that.

As a global community, we must ensure that legitimate concerns about liability do not hold back the possibility of developing an Ebola vaccine, an essential strategy in our global response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.