The death tax should be completely and permanently repealed now in order to make the Tax Code fairer and simpler and to eliminate the harmful drag this tax has on the economy.

The U.S. is looking to India as more then just a marketplace for our defense products, but as a technology, aerospace and strategic partner for our future endeavors.

Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules.

We need to end permanently the tax that punishes American values of savings and investment and of building small businesses and family farms and ranches.

According to the Small Business Administration, more than 70 percent of all family businesses do not survive through the second generation, and 8 percent do not make it to a third.

America demands invention and innovation to succeed.

Our National Guard, as I think everybody knows, has provided about 40 percent of the boots on the ground in Iraq and in the conflict against Islamofascism. They went into that battle, being called up for their national security service, short of equipment.

No one who knows my personal situation would think I am not sympathetic to the needs of the active forces.

The death tax is one of the leading causes of the dissolution of small businesses.

The death tax punishes the American dream - making it virtually impossible for the average American family to build wealth across generations.

While I support immigration regulated through a legal framework, I do not support rewarding those who broke the law to get here.

Workers come to America to fill jobs unwanted by Americans, but they are staying and they are not going home.

A number of the major terrorist captures we have made, the terrorist operations designed for the United States that we have interrupted, were enabled by the terrorist tracking program.

America's workers face a battle for their jobs. They are the finest workers in the world. American workers grow, harvest, and mine some of the world's highest quality and most plentiful raw materials.

As the Senator from Vermont was kind enough to note, I did have the experience of being commander in chief of our National Guard in Missouri for 8 years.

As we have heard, the end of al-Zarqawi is a significant blow to al-Qaida operations in Iraq. It is another clear indication of the progress we are making.

At a time when the insurgents are saying that time is working against them, my Democratic colleagues are introducing a measure to set a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq that will undercut the momentum that the insurgents themselves say we have built in Iraq.

For the vast majority of places in America, there is no way you can build a security system such as we have here because of the high priority this rates in terms of terrorist interests.

For this reason, it is essential that our Nation's rural transportation professionals be provided with the necessary tools and support to promote and showcase the value, benefits, and accomplishments of rural transportation planning and development.

I don't think anyone who has followed the progress of the Islamofascist terrorists who have threatened us believe we are going to be safe if we try a fortress mentality, to step back and say no one is going to hit us, they don't care about the United States. They do.