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As long as I am in the Congress, I will continue to fight for and defend our sacred values.

I say to my colleagues never confine your best work, your hopes, your dreams, the aspiration of the American people to what will be signed by George W. Bush because that is too limiting a factor.

In the absence of a Congress ready to act to reduce gun violence, we will keep working to create a different Congress.

My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive. We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow.

My government career is over.

We have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead our country to a better and brighter future, and I cannot wait to roll up my sleeves and get back to work.

At a time when we have much work to do to address our Nation's critical infrastructure, and, as I said, which is currently in dire need of upgrade and repair, this legislation is also a jobs bill and is obviously a jobs creator.

But 18 years after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, there still remains unfinished work to completely rectify and close this regrettable chapter in our Nation's history.

I've been in Congress 14 years. I've been on the Appropriations Committee in which we are in charge of trying to move legislation.

I hope they're going to learn, and as a result of our response, that it isn't going to work. They're not going to change our life, they're not going to have us throw out our Constitution, and they're not going to chase us out of the Middle East.