We all learned in kindergarten that the beginning is a very good place to start. As we have this debate on illegal immigration and illegal entry into this country, let's begin at the very beginning by sealing the borders to this great Nation.

I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.

We all learned in kindergarten that the beginning is a very good place to start. As we have this debate on illegal immigration and illegal entry into this country, let's begin at the very beginning by sealing the borders to this great Nation.

We do thank our men and women in uniform. And I thank them. I thank this House today that approved a bill that will allow for a pay raise for our military. We are grateful for that and for the actions of this body.

This is now a global war on terror and, indeed, it is important, it is imperative that we win in the battles in Afghanistan and that we win in the battles in Iraq. And as the gentleman from Georgia has mentioned, this is not something that is going to be quick and easy.

I think that, on the reconciliation issue, if they had the votes, we wouldn't have had the summit. And if they try to go through reconciliation, it will be a change in semantics. Instead of the American people saying 'stop the bill' or 'kill the bill,' it's all going to be about repealing the bill. That's not the kind of discussion that they want.

Can any of us even imagine, after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt suggesting we negotiate a resolution or that we could simply prosecute those involved? Of course it is unimaginable. We are right to be in the Middle East, and we are right to treat this as the war it is.

Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an act of war.

Madam Speaker, it is time to halt illegal entry into this country. It is time to halt the flow of illegal drugs and weapons into this great Nation, and it is time to secure our borders.

Our tax policies, the tax relief and reform we passed in 2003 and 2005, helped get government out of the way of America's entrepreneurs, and our unemployment rate is now lower than it was in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.

Republicans rejected calls for amnesty and we've fought efforts to provide illegal aliens with taxpayer funded benefits. The American people are far closer to our Republican approach to border security than they are to Nancy Pelosi's approach.

On energy, we should be exploring for domestic sources of energy.

Every town has become a border town and every State has become a border State.

Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be.

Republicans are not going to play I-told-you-so, but it is pretty obvious that the tax reductions passed in 2003 helped Americans dig out of a recession and get back to work.

We must be certain that we all realize that our enemy is not an enemy that is located in one single place. There are terrorist cells all around the globe.

Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years.

This majority is working for America, and one of those ways is we have tremendously low unemployment. This economy has created millions of new jobs, and we are expecting growth this first quarter of somewhere higher than 4 percent.

Mr. Speaker, we are a blessed Nation. We have not suffered another attack on our soil since September 11, and we are grateful. We have killed or captured dozens of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Our military and intelligence forces are working both hard and smart.

A conservative vision to tech issues assumes the imperfection of mankind and a preference for markets - not politics - to drive outcomes.

An overly expansive virtual 'toll' for the Internet that blocks consumers' and competitors' access to the e-commerce superhighway is not the right answer.

Any spending should be debated openly on the floor of the House and voted on in open session, with the American people having a chance to watch and listen.

As far as the political landscape in our state, I think that what we continue to see is that Tennessean voters are more independent and more conservative, and they are watching issues very closely; they are watching votes very closely.

As more delivery systems for entertainment producers come on board, you have all these different formats where people are compensated.

Because America leads the world by example, it's no surprise that some might seek to imitate our domestic rules and regulations on a global scale.

Being Speaker of the House is a really tough spot.

Citizens United fought to defend our right to free speech - and won a great victory in the United States Supreme Court.

Congress, of course, is not bound to accept the president's budget figures, but the House has the sole power to appropriate funds for spending, and it is a duty that should not be ignored.

Countries like Iran and China support an Internet Iron Curtain that would censor political dissidents and deny anonymous activity online through mandatory registrations of IP addresses.

Earmarks are almost always inserted by a member of Congress without any notice to other members, and without a chance for Congress as a whole to debate a particular earmark as they relate to national priorities.

Even the president's own Science and Technology Office head Mister Holdren says no one single weather event is due specifically to climate change.

Every new rule, mandate, and regulatory edict is one more obstacle that small business owners, entrepreneurs, and job creators have to swallow.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has said that several foreign dignitaries personally spoke to him about creating a new Internet user fee to subsidize an international universal service fund at the expense of traditional end users.

Great Britain has long been one of our strongest friends in the free world.

Here in Tennessee, instead of the big spending, big government, job killing agenda of the Obama Administration, Tennesseans have tightened their belts and are struggling to find jobs that will enable them to support their families.

I am every single day talking with and working with people in my district who are seeing their health care insurance costs go up five times, 105 percent, 300 percent, that are getting pay cuts, that are losing 40-hour workweeks, that are having to work two and three jobs.

I fear that light touch regulations that have allowed the Internet to prosper will now be replaced by a heavy hand that stifles innovation and does not adapt well to change. The Internet is not broken.

I firmly believe that the most important feature of spending the people's money is complete transparency.

I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making, like, $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions.

I support safeguarding users' personally identifiable information and sensitive data like health or financial records. I also believe the government has a responsibility to punish deceptive and unfair practices that defy reasonable expectations about consumers' privacy.

I think people have found it very interesting that those that enforce ObamaCare, those that wrote Obamacare, are not a part of ObamaCare.

I work every weekend in my district.

I would love for women to be focused on maximum wage, and I have fought to be recognized with equality for a long time.

I've always said that I didn't want to be given a job because I was a female, I wanted it because I was the most well-qualified person for the job. And making certain that companies are going to move forward in that vein, that is what women want.

If a natural disaster strikes your community, reach out to your friends, neighbors, and complete strangers. Lend a helping hand.

If a president can enforce a part of a law and delay a part of a law, then does he have a power to not enforce any law he so chooses? If he can allow illegal aliens to freely run across our border, can he force legal citizens out of the country? Where would be the end of his power?

If the expansion of a global legal regime for communication technologies gains traction, the effects to the global economy as well as our individual liberties will be severe.

In this dangerous world that we live in, where hatred and violence and natural disasters sometimes collide to almost overwhelm us, we each can help in some way.

Inserting the FCC into our states' economic and fiscal affairs sets a dangerous precedent and violates state sovereignty in a manner that warrants deeper examination.