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For me, one of my earliest memories of politics where I thought that I could do anything was when Walter Mondale of Minnesota picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. I literally remember what she wore - the red dress, the white pearls. And I saw that, and I thought, 'Anything is possible.'
We have to develop a strong economic message which says every American is entitled to health care through a national health care program. And we're not going to allow these large corporations to push through trade agreements which allow them to throw Americans out on the street and run to China.
The reality is that we have one of lowest voter turnouts of any major country on earth because so many people have given up on the political process. The reality is that there has been trillions of dollars of wealth going from the middle class in the last 30 years to the top 1/10th of 1 percent.
My father passed away a few days before my election. This man, an African American born to a poor single mother in 1936 in the South, would worry in the last years of his life that he had better life chances when he was growing up than a young man born in the same circumstances would have today.
You can't always say what's popular and you ought to go with it. I think that's why the founders were concerned about direct democracy. That's why we have a republic and that's why we have representatives who who are supposed to look at the issues and to look out for the next generation as well.
I enjoy repartee and frequently engage in devil's advocacy. In short, when I talk to friends, I do not guard every word that I say because I think that I know they know that my commitment to equality and justice is real, and they would not twist my words or misinterpret what I am saying to them.
Our Keystone legislation received strong bipartisan support in the Senate. Although it didn't receive the 60 votes necessary for passage, 56 senators - a majority - voted in favor of the bill. Despite President Obama's actively lobbying against the bill, we still won the support of 11 Democrats.
We are an important check on the powers of the executive. Our consent is necessary for the president to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and, in many respects, to conduct foreign policy. Whether we are of the same party, we are not the president's subordinates. We are his equal!
Reforms to our complex and dysfunctional immigration system should not in any way favor those who came here illegally over the millions of applicants who seek to come here lawfully. Additionally, the framework carves out a special exception for agricultural workers that has little justification.
The Senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to - meaning a place where nothing is decided without a good dose of deliberation and debate, as well as input from both the majority and minority parties - it arrives at a result that is acceptable to people all along the political spectrum.
America's not the world's policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.
This is an ongoing threat from a variety of sources around the world. And actually I think it works both ways. I'm not privy to it, but I think all of the various country that have the ability are invading each other's computers all the time. But we have to protect our data. It's very important.
On the Gang of Eight bill, there was no provisions really for extra scrutiny or safety for refugees. At the time the bill came up, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Their fingerprints were on a bomb from Iraq. They were in the database, but we didn't pick them up.
I've been fighting amidst a lot of opposition from both Hillary Clinton as well as some Republicans who wanted to send arms to the allies of ISIS. ISIS rides around in a billion dollars worth of U.S. Humvees. It's a disgrace. We've got to stop - we shouldn't fund our enemies, for goodness sakes.
Bulk collection of phone records didn't find or stop the Tsarnaev brothers from the massacre in Boston. In fact, one might argue that all of the money spent on bulk collection takes money away from human analysts that might have noticed the older brother's trip to become radicalized in Chechnya.
When you look at statistics for the white community alone, you see that we've become two separate worlds in which the successful are educated and wait to have children until they are married, and those in poverty are primarily those without higher education and with children outside of marriage.
I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father. That was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi that I'm going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father.
If we go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany - look, we saw it in Britain. Neville Chamberlain told the British people: Accept the Nazis. Yes, they will dominate the continent of Europe, but that is not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We cannot possibly stand against them.
While Congressional members face the political costs of debate on military action, our service members bear the human costs of those decisions. And if we choose to avoid debate, avoid accountability, avoid a hard decision, how can we demand that our military willingly sacrifice their very lives?
There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets.
What I do see is Cuban people that are just - want to see change. They are vibrant. They are trying to fix up old cars, so they can start their tourism businesses. There's hundreds of thousands of small companies that have already started under some exceptions that Raul Castro has put into place.
Kid gets caught with marijuana, that kid has a police record. A Wall Street executive destroys the economy, $5 billion settlement with the government, no criminal record. That is what power is about. That is what corruption is about. And that is what has to change in the United States of America.
Not just for the U.S. Senate but it also means for school board and city council. We need to revitalize American democracy. We need to have people at all - all over this country, having the courage to take on big money and demand a set of policies that work for all of us and not just for the few.
The criteria for serving one's country should be competence, courage and willingness to serve. When we deny people the chance to serve because of their sexual orientation, we deprive them of their rights of citizenship, and we deprive our armed forces the service of willing and capable Americans.
People who travel should be on guard. All our military, our police and I think the word has been spread. And people know to be careful to watch, to report. Something that looks suspicious to you, don't be embarrassed to go to an authority and say, "Look, I saw this and it seems suspicious to me."
We have a duty to ensure that patients don't have to worry whether they'll be dropped from their coverage if they get sick. Small business owners shouldn't have to break the bank to provide coverage to their employees. And families should not be forced into bankruptcy because of a medical crisis.
We [the USA] have a $16 trillion debt which these tax increases will do nothing to solve and you will have at least 200,000 less jobs next year than you have now. And the people who vote for that will be responsible for that decision and they will held accountable for that terrible public policy.
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.
I'll do anything to try to prevent John Bolton from getting any position, because I think his world view is naive. He believes we're going to spread democracy. We're going to topple governments everywhere and they're going to elect Thomas Jefferson. That's not the way it works in the Middle East.
How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - thats not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.
I think Hispanic community - the values that resonate in our community are fundamentally conservative. They are faith, family and patriotism. Do you know the rate of military enlistment among Hispanics is higher than any demographic in this country? And they are also hard work and responsibility.
This is what oligarchy looks like: Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-hundredth of 1 percent makes more than 40 percent of all campaign contributions. The billionaire class owns the political system and reaps the benefits from it.
I do believe that we should substantially lower student debt in this country, which is crushing millions of people. We pay for it, in my view, by a tax on Wall Street speculation. The middle class bailed out Wall Street in their time of need. Now, it is Wall Street's time to help the middle class.
I would ask... of my supporters to get away from the personality conflicts that media tries to bring forward and focus on the real issues impacting the American people. And when you do that, I think the choice is pretty clear and that is that Hillary Clinton is far and away the superior candidate.
My simple point is that I judge a person's faith by how they live their life, not by the tenets of their religion. I've watched the holiest of people walk past somebody in need or treat their staff mean. To me, the beauty of faith is only seen when people live it consistently or struggle to do so.
You built a factory out there, good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads that the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
Unemployment insurance was meant to be a bridge for temporary spells of unemployment. The bad news is all the evidence is that the longer you have unemployment insurance, the longer people stay out of work, their skills erode. The job they ultimately get pays less. And that's not to their benefit.
Because the people of New Hampshire take their responsibilities as citizens of the Republic seriously, they keep it interesting for candidates who, believe it or not, can get a little tired of the mannered, predictable, and unimaginative qualities that typically afflict modern political campaigns.
Our country has a lot of problems. When the world looks at how bad the United States is and then we go talk about civil liberties, I do not think we are a very good messenger. I don't know that we have a right to lecture. We are not in a position to be more aggressive. We have to fix our own mess.
If you're running to be president of the United States, you can't just tell people you're going to make America great again. I think you need to begin to explain exactly how you're going to do it policy-wise. We're not going to win a general election with a candidate that refuses to detail policy.
I think that there is a bipartisan consensus that's incorrect that we should have the whole world be in NATO. For example, if we had Ukraine and Georgia in NATO - and this is something McCain and the other neocons have advocated for - we would be at war now because Russia has invaded both of them.
I explained to the president that I've been pleased with my conversations with the Attorney General and Civil Rights Division regarding their helpful understanding that they aren't taking over this investigation, but are conducting a parallel review of the events that led to Michael Brown's death.
How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.
The debate over Social Security should not be about how much we can cut from the program in order to balance the federal budget. The debate over Social Security should not be about raising the retirement age or limiting benefits. The debate over Social Security should be about retirement security.
Donald Trump threatened to file a defamation suit against me for running a TV ad that consisted only entirely of his own words on national television. Now, that's really a remarkable theory, that it is defamation to show people what he said on national TV. I think the voters are smarter than that.
It's not beneficial when you have a presidential candidate like Donald Trump, telling his supporters "punch that guy in the face." I think everyone candidate ought to aspire toward civility, towards decency, towards bringing us together. I don't think we should be using angry and hateful rhetoric.
I don't know what the strategy will be in Washington. The reality is, is, I have got to go down there, as my mentor, as people like Bill Bradley have told me to do, get to know your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, recognize that they, too, beat with the same heart and the same type of blood.
Whether you agree or disagree with privatization, two things are obvious. First, taxpayers need to be asking more and better questions before handing over control of critical public assets like a highway, an airport, or a parking meter concession. And second, Uncle Sam is being played for a sucker.
We're going to create factory jobs for recent immigrants, and Donald Trump is going to take care of them. That's why his numbers, even right now, in this negative period, are holding pretty strong, because people want a leader that's going to make this country great again and have a strong economy.
If we are going to out-innovate, out-compete, out-educate other countries, it's going to be women who make a difference, it's women who are going to lead the way and you know, until women get that rightful place and decision making and leadership and growth, America won't realize all her potential.