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If the Senate can't perform its most basic responsibilities, I worry about how we're going to make the tough decisions and do the hard work that will be necessary to get our country on a path to fiscal solvency.

When you have a Senate that is 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans and one independent, it's quite obvious that the only way we are going to get something done is if we work together.

Washington faces many challenges these days, and today's United States Senate needs more trusted conservatives going there to make decisions and choices that put the people first and not the business-as-usual crowd.

What's going on in the Senate is kind of a politics of escalation. We're getting sort of like the Mideast: pay back everybody when you're in charge.

Senators will do what they think they need to do to represent their constituents.

A majority of senators should be able to adopt rules at the beginning of each Congress.

We've passed an energy bill in the House, to help us be less reliant upon foreign oil so we can get gas prices down. But nothing happens in the Senate.

Unfortunately, the Senate Democrats have become an extreme party. They have become a party that has abdicated their responsibilities. Under Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats, we have a do-nothing Senate.

When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.