Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up to give them the tools at their disposable that make it possible for them to access all the hope all the promise all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that.

During the last regular session and the most recent special session measures that I see as little more than Band-Aids were applied to three health programs in the state.

We see tremendous excitement from small-business people about the administration and about the attention and commitment that the president has to do things that really make a difference. I think they recognize that health care is one of those. I think they recognize that what we've been doing in the Recovery Act with our loan programs has mattered.

Half of all women who are sexually active but do not want to get pregnant need publicly funded services to help them access public health programs like Medicaid and Title X the national family planning program.

We are particularly interested in the mental health programs and policies that support our troops and their families before during and after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many health care providers particularly physicians in rural and urban areas are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.

And some of what we're doing in Government even now some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.

Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies misuse of government credit cards abuse of the Federal entitlement programs and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy.

As more people rely on government programs the harder it becomes to conduct the necessary reforms to preserve them to help our society's most vulnerable.

Let's be honest about this the liberal agenda with failed stimulus plans and government entitlement programs is crippling our economy and our quality of life.

Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program.

After-school tutoring programs care for the elderly shelters for the homeless disaster relief work and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding.

In Michigan a liberal democrat raised taxes and kept their government programs at the same level. And guess what? Their economy continued into the toilet it continued down.

In a very weak economy when you say 'cut government spending ' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty to help build a strong middle class to help educate our kids and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs once launched never disappear. Actually a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

The debt-ceiling vote isn't about what will be done in the future it is about the integrity of America's commitment to support the bonds we issue. Elected officials have an obligation to maintain that integrity regardless of whether they voted for the programs that required the borrowing in the first place.