Cold-turkey deficit reduction would cause a significant recession. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that going headlong over the cliff would cause our gross domestic product, which has been growing at an annual rate of around 2 percent, to fall at a rate of 2.9 percent in the first half of 2013.

If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that's going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward 20, 30 years is government spending on healthcare.

Tax increases appear to have a very large sustained and highly significant negative impact on output.

The stock market crash in October 1929 didn't destroy a particularly large amount of wealth or make people highly pessimistic. Rather, it made companies and consumers very unsure about future income, and so led them to stop spending as they waited for more information.

Let us learn from the lessons of September 11 and not wait for a major strike before we act. We must work together - Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the White House, government and the private sector - to make our country a safer and more prosperous place.

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.

While I support making improvements in the Affordable Care Act, trying to enact them while holding the government and our economic recovery hostage is reckless and irresponsible.

Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working.