In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children's classrooms and in their future.

The fight for reform comes down to a simple goal: giving our citizens the confidence that government serves the people first and the people only.

Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed.

However, before we make the mistake of patting ourselves on the back, let's remember: government does not create jobs. It only helps create the conditions that make jobs more or less likely. The real credit for our economic renewal belongs to the people of Alabama .

To Republicans, I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall.

There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn't any pain I haven't known.

Just as an individual of pre-eminent worth transforms democracy into a monarchy of the best man, even so the rule of one man, if in all things it has an eye to the common welfare, is democracy.

Oregonians have many good reasons to be proud of our election system.