While it may be difficult to understand why cities and even entire states would doom themselves to insolvency by undertaking these obligations, the answer is simple: Democratic politicians, who have near-total political control of California and of America's biggest cities, support this massive transfer of wealth to public employees.

I've got three little kids at home, and I'm trying to save this country from itself. I'm not here to play political power games, and I've had enough of people playing political power games, and this has just gone on too long.

Pointing out that overspending on public-employee benefits leads to fiscal instability does not mean that public employees are bad people or that they deserve to fall on hard times; it's just observing a simple truth.

To stabilize the nation's public-employee pension systems and to prevent federal taxpayers from being billed for failed pension funds, I have introduced the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act in Congress.

I will continue to ask the president and his subordinates to work with Congress rather than against it.

I'm going to try and make people realize that in order to live the life they are living, they need to have democracy, and it's being threatened.

The Small Business Administration was fundamental in helping our company. There's great initiative from the government if you know the right places to look.

Solutionism' for me is, above all, an unthinking pursuit of perfection - by means of technology - without coming to grips with the fact that imperfection is an essential feature of liberal democracy.