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Our priority must be to build a path towards balancing the budget, and we cannot tolerate growing deficits.

The challenge has been, we make policy in the world of politics.

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it.

I am prepared to discuss the things that I believe we need to do not just to raise the debt limit. Raising the debt limit is the easiest thing. That's one vote away. The hard thing is to show the world we are serious about putting our spending in order so we can show people we'll able to pay our bills down the road.

When I came to Congress, I campaigned for fiscal responsibility. And the earmarking problem and crisis caused a great erosion in the public's confidence in Congress. We've got to find a way to do it without that. And I'm confident that we can.

It certainly would be helpful going forward for deficit reduction efforts to focus on the medium term while not subtracting from the impetus we need to keep a fragile economy moving forward.

Truly, the challenges we face are not Democratic challenges or Republican challenges. In fact, they are not political challenges at all; they are fiscal challenges, and educational challenges, and the challenges of figuring out how to take care of each other.

Perhaps the hardest challenge has been to persuade the public, impatient for rapid growth, of the need to ensure stability first. Growth, it is argued, is always more important, regardless of the looming economic risks.

Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal crisis. We cannot deny it; instead we must, as Americans, confront it responsibly. And that is exactly what Republicans pledge to do.

One of the big challenges for our party is to demonstrate to people that we have an agenda for economic prosperity and that we can be trusted with their money.