When you combine the men and women deployed from our military installations with activated reservists and members of the National Guard, Georgia is contributing more personnel to the theatre than any other State in our Union.

Floods, droughts, and natural disasters are a fact of life for farmers, ranchers, and foresters. They have persevered in the past, and they will adapt in the future - with the assistance of the scientists and experts at USDA.

The goal of any farmer, after producing enough to feed his own family, has always been to find the best place to sell the year's crop.

I think overall, from a deputy, from an undersecretary standpoint, the goal of a good leader is to get diversity across there. Geographical diversity is important. Industry diversity is important: you can't have all corn growers... Not only that, you've got gender diversity, you've got racial diversity.

It is a sound principle of finance, and a still sounder principle of government, that those who have the duty of expending the revenue of a country should also be saddled with the responsibility of levying and providing it.

If it were true that special favors were given to some of these people because they are my cronies, then they should still be here, and they should be wealthy. But who are these cronies? If there be any cronies in government, point them out, and we will investigate.

Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder.

Let me say that if the political arena is your choice as you work to keep our democracy strong and our essential freedoms accessible for all, then that is what you should do, and I salute you. We need champions in all walks of our civic discourse.