I've said repeatedly publicly, and other members have, that until you adjust the eligibility for entitlements, do things like raising the age for Medicare for future beneficiaries. Not for those currently receiving or those about to receive. Have serious means testing for high income people. You know Warren Buffett's always complaining about not paying enough taxes. And what I'm complaining about is we're paying for his Medicare. We ought not to be providing these kinds of benefits for millionaires and billionaires.
And this year, when we end the cruel, defeatist practice of passing children who cannot read into fourth grade, and when our most diligent students begin to graduate from high school in 11 years, and get a head start on college costs with the dollars they earned through their hard work, others will take notice of Indiana yet again.
I've often wished we had more women in the Senate.
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.
Given the scope of these programs, it's understandable that many would be concerned about issues related to privacy. But what's difficult to understand is the motivation of somebody who intentionally would seek to warn the nation's enemies of lawful programs created to protect the American people. And I hope that he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
We didn't make much progress on the country's agenda. And in my view it's because the Senate basically hadn't done much of anything, with a couple of exceptions, for the last four years [of Barack Obama's presidency]. And that's going to change.
I'm really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they've been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech.
It's important to remember that some of our best sources in the war against radical Islamic terrorism are Muslims, both in America and overseas.
As the leader of the Republicans what I'm telling that we elected the president to be president. It's time for him to step up to the plate and lead us in the direction of reducing our excessive spending.
Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited so voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate.
After adding trillions to the debt on big-government policies most Americans didn't ask for and which we couldn't afford, Democratic leaders say they need more money, which they intend to take from small business, even though small businesses create the majority of new jobs.
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.
I don't think there's any equivalency between the way that the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.
Eventually, Americans would be stuck with government-run health care whether they like it or not. That's when the worst scenario would take shape, with Americans subjected to bureaucratic hassles, hours spent on hold waiting for a government service rep to take a call, restrictions on care, and, yes, lifesaving treatment and lifesaving surgeries denied or delayed.
The administration still wants to govern from the far-left and that's going to produce kind a partisan result here in the Congress.
A reporter asked recently, 'What keeps you up at night?' I replied that I generally sleep well, but if I ever do have trouble, I don't have to count sheep. I count all the states I'm glad I'm not the governor of.
Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition.
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.
If you've got a brand new administration coming into office you want to have, at the very least, a national security team in place on day one.
More women are graduating from college now than men.
I think the important thing to remember here is that we haven't been attacked again at home since September of 2001.
We ought to make sure that the eligibility for entitlements meets the demographics of America.
Mitt Romney has spent his entire life finding ways to solve problems.
I think it's not just Republicans who would like to see the Senate run differently. I think there are a reasonable number of Democrats as well.
It is a statement to the obvious, however, that [Barack] Obama - of Obamacare - is the President of the United States, so I don't want people to have [unrealistic] expectations about what may actually become law with Obama - of Obamacare - in the White House. But we intend to keep our commitment to the American people.
