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I hate to play the I-live-in-the-country card, but it really takes all of the 'pack the kids into the car and run from here to there' out of the equation.

One thing I want to do is create something called Ring Around Congress. It would be a state deal and also a national thing, where the kids, as a field trip, will go and join hands around Congress and give the politicians report cards on how they're voting on hunger issues.

I've got three little kids at home, and I'm trying to save this country from itself. I'm not here to play political power games, and I've had enough of people playing political power games, and this has just gone on too long.

Adults, who outnumber kids four or five to one, are in charge. We wield the resources, run the world, and completely thwart kids' creativity.

In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.

As far as carrying the American banner, you just do what's right for the kids.

Give your kids a bloody knife and fork and let me put some fresh food in front of them they can eat.

You have to give kids from ordinary families a ladder. You have to show them there's a way out.

My message to everyone: the next time you hear about migrant children near the border, just picture them as your own. Then think what you would want our government to do.

What we are effectively doing, I say this to the young people of America whom my colleagues represent, is leaving our children and grandchildren the tab for fighting a war, letting them pay for the lion's share of it by simply adding it to the national debt.