Now our job, our duty, our responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our citizens cannot be complete unless we guarantee health care security for our citizens.

What Republicans have done in my view is that they are systematically dismantling a sense of community in America.

We should also challenge this country to come up with strategies and technologies that allow us to produce nuclear energy without necessarily producing a byproduct that can be converted to something far more dangerous. I believe that can be done. It may not be done tomorrow, but it clearly needs to be worked on.

More than half of America's rural counties are losing population and with it, political representation.

To help producers serve larger institutional customers like schools and hospitals, USDA has helped fund new regional infrastructure like cold storage warehouses, commercial kitchens and local slaughter facilities.

There are a lot of farmers and ranchers who are struggling. I get on my knees every day. If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it.

Over the past two years, the Obama Administration and USDA have worked to build a foundation for sustainable economic growth in rural America. At the center of our vision is an effort to increase domestic production and use of renewable energy.