Because you want to have competition to drive down the price. You want innovation. You have the ability to get people to agree that it's worth having a public plan. You could get private insurers to cover this population, but you couldn't without giving the population leverage in the marketplace.

The Export-Import Bank is one of the most important tools America has to create jobs.

Let's embrace productive capitalism, not casino capitalism, by restoring transparency and true competition in the commodities markets.

Taxpayers have put more than $24 trillion on the line to resuscitate Wall Street after the economic meltdown of last year. With the help of this massive taxpayer support, the nation's largest banks are posting record profits.

No one can take away the experience of Yeltsin's freedoms, but Russian democracy will never follow Western models: other authoritarian 'controlled democracies' - Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico - ultimately developed into democracies. But it took decades.

Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views. It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorize and which to prevent.

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.

I hope America can also be the cultural leader of the world, and use this frontier spirit to lead and show others that we need courage to go places where we have not gone before.