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The American people and American businesses are looking to the federal government to lead our nation on the path to economic recovery. It is time to stop splitting hairs. It is time to act.

It is time to cut out the mountains of waste and inefficiency and duplication in the federal government.

If our nation is to rebuild opportunity for future generations, it will require our elected leaders to realize that their responsibility lies not with their political party, but rather with the American people that they have been chosen to represent.

I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years.

Without a doubt, first thing we should do is clean up our fiscal house, and that starts with balancing our budgets and digging out of this red ink. We cannot expect to continue in this fashion and remain the leader of the free world.

I think it's time... that we reform Congress to the point where all public assistance comes in one single committee. One area where all public assistance can be located, and it will be easy to see all the duplications, all the waste, so much easier to see areas where fraud is running rampant.

We really need a public-interest government that is not taking marching orders from the fossil-fuel industry and the banks and the war profiteers. We really need a government that is acting on our behalf.

In view of our public pledges, we public officials can never again go before the public merely promising election reform. The time for promises is past.

We ought to start running the government like a private-sector business. I have that ability as CEO of our companies. I have line item vetoes, and if I didn't, we'd probably be out of business by now.

Times have changed; so must the lenses through which we see the political future.