Earmarks are supposed to be bad. But they don't increase spending.

Children that are raised in a home with a married mother and father consistently do better in every measure of well-being than their peers who come from divorced or step-parent, single-parent, cohabiting homes.

Additionally, this tax forces family businesses to invest in Uncle Sam rather than the economy. When families are forced to repurchase businesses because of the death tax, that means less money is being invested in new jobs and capital expansion.

Next month, I will celebrate my 30th anniversary of marriage with my beautiful bride, Vicki. Our marriage has been a blessing. I have gained even more respect for the institution over the past 3 decades and will defend it against attack.

So we want to change the tax system. We want it to be fair, and we want to see some tax relief because people do three things when they get a little extra money in their pocket: They save it or they spend it or they invest it.

In fact, there are more homeowners today than ever before in the history of our Nation and more minority homeowners than ever before in the history of our Nation.

Today, we are now deciding how do we treat those who are choosing to carry out a war against us, non-U.S. citizens who are choosing to take us to task for what we believe and who we are. In this conflict, we have to decide how we are going to try to find these terrorists.