Mitch McConnell

I don't want to sound like a whiner here, but if you get beat up all the time, it affects you.

I think it's a time to be sad about what's been done to the United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world.

You know, 'Professor Obama' has been a label applied to him by Republicans and Democrats alike. He's a very smart guy. But I think he'd be, you know, better served not to spend so much time trying to impress us with his particular position on an issue and understand that there are things upon which we simply have a disagreement.

My wife came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English and ended up in the president's Cabinet.

It is time for a leader who will lead.

It's time Congress got its priorities straight.

It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent.

There is a lot of room for improvement in Social Security. We owe our children the most financially sound system possible. They will have paid into it their entire working lives. They deserve to be protected by it. for our children and grandchildren.

We need to strengthen and save Social Security for today's workers. If we don't act now, this system, born out of the New Deal, will become a bad deal.

What will happen is the bills will start out the way we like them; in order to move them - we'll probably have to make compromises. That's the way the legislative process works when it's functioning.

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.

The Senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to - meaning a place where nothing is decided without a good dose of deliberation and debate, as well as input from both the majority and minority parties - it arrives at a result that is acceptable to people all along the political spectrum.