My dad and my uncles owned a bar outside of Cincinnati. I worked there growing up, mopping floors, waiting tables.

I talked to a lot of employers who just are, are fearful of what's coming next out of Washington. It's all the spending, it's all the debt. It's their national energy tax, they want to call it cap and trade - more mandates, higher costs, more taxes. Their healthcare bill - more mandates, higher costs, higher taxes.

I'm what you'd call a regular guy with a big job.

The American people are screaming at the top of their lungs to Washington, 'Stop! Stop the spending, stop the job-killing policies.' And yet, Democrats in Washington refuse to listen to the American people.

We will be returning to historical levels of inequality. We'll view post-war America as a kind of strange interlude not to be repeated. It won't be the dreams that we all had that virtually all incomes go up in lockstep at three percent a year. It hurts to give that up.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.

I remember Congressman Conyers voting against the PATRIOT Act, voting against the Iraq War when it was unpopular to. That tremendous amount of courage that comes with that kind of leadership, I mean, that's what we need.