In the United States Senate, we cannot do great things without reaching across the aisle and working together - and I look forward to the challenges ahead.

The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way we think about security.

Increased funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program is a priority for the Bush Administration, and I am pleased that many families in North Carolina will benefit from this increase.

The inconveniences we faced within this state are minor compared to... New Orleans.

Congress must not do something just for the sake of doing something. We must carefully and thoughtfully consider the implications of any action and whether that action will help or hinder our ultimate mission of protecting U.S. citizens from terror.

We often take for granted that our lights will come on when we flip the light switch, but the reality is that our reliability standards and the current state of the transmission grid leave us all vulnerable to blackouts.

It is critical that we have a comprehensive energy plan to provide affordable and reliable supplies of energy so that our economy will not be dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Although we must change the ways we protect our country, we must also guard against policies that appear attractive but offer little real protection and may even impede our ability to protect ourselves.

In the United States Senate, we cannot do great things without reaching across the aisle and working together - and I look forward to the challenges ahead.

No one can get to the Right of me.

The strongest tool we, as Americans, have is our ability to rally together and to find solutions with unity of purpose.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me.

Today America lost a great elder statesman, a committed public servant, and leader of the Senate. And today I lost a treasured friend. Ted Kennedy was an iconic, larger than life United States senator whose influence cannot be overstated. Many have come before, and many will come after, but Ted Kennedy's name will always be remembered as someone who lived and breathed the United States Senate and the work completed within its chamber.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.

There was a Republican majority of the Senate, and it tempered the nature of the nominations being made.

In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate - and fortunately on matters of national security he was very often in the minority.

Now that this legislation has passed the House, I look forward to the vote in the Senate that will bring us to Conference, where we can resolve any outstanding issues and make this postal reform reality - for the Postal Service and for all Americans.

I will not be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority in the United States Senate.

People just want to hear some common sense... and I bring to bear the experience in local government and state government and national government - I was the first woman in history on the Senate Finance Committee - not to mention the diplomatic international experience.

To put that into some perspective, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore had first taken the idea of the Kyoto Protocol up to the Congress, the United States Senate voted it down 95 to nothing.

Congress and the White House are working out their scheme for pushing through a healthcare 'reform' bill that has more pages than the U.S. Constitution has words. I guarantee you that not a single member of the House or Senate has a complete understanding of that legislation any more than they understood all the implications of the USA PATRIOT Act back in 2001.

The day that I was elected to the United States Senate remains among the most cherished of my life.

It is a great privilege for any man to become a member of the Senate.

I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history, and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed.

Apparently there are some Democratic leaders in the Senate that are running for office who now believe in tax cuts.

The U.S. Senate already has one Arlen Specter too many.

I hope that as the Senate and the American people learn more about me they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.

I may have grown cynical from long service, but this is a tendency I do not like, and I sometimes think I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years and listen to it.

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process.

We respect the role of the Senate. We respect the authority of the Senate to look at the qualifications of Judge Roberts, and at the end of the day I'm optimistic that if given a fair hearing and a fair opportunity, that he will be confirmed.

The Senate is an unknowing world.

The nation will be shaped for decades by decisions that are made by President Bush and the Senate about the future of the Supreme Court.

That is why I fought against abortion and that is why if I were still in the Senate I would be doing everything I could to defend the sanctity of marriage.

The Senate is a remarkable institution. It is unique. There is no other body, no other political body, no other democratic legislature in the world quite like the U.S. Senate.

I may fall here in the Senate chamber, but I will. never make any compromise with any such men.

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.

As a Democrat in this Senate, I felt aggrieved by some things the other side has done. I have no doubt they feel aggrieved about some of the things we have done.

If the Republicans get control back of the United States Senate, we will no longer have a check and balance on the White House, on the Republican Congress.

I didn't get to the Senate by accident.

Americans simply ask for, not just Democrats in the House but also the Senate has asked the President for a clear plan as it relates to dealing with the issue of Iraq and our troops and making sure that we can bring families together in the very near future.

Advice and consent does not mean rubber stamp in the Senate.

I had come to regard the U.S. Senate's rejection of the League of Nations as a tragic mistake.

I am really proud to be a part in whatever way of women becoming active in the political scene. I think it was the first time that people came to terms with the reality of what it meant to have a Senate made up of 98 men and two women.

If the president is failing to disclose material facts with regard to legislation being presented to the Congress on a question as important as war and peace, I think it does impair the level of trust that the House and the Senate have for this administration.

Barbara Boxer is the most bitterly partisan, most anti-defense senator in the United States Senate today. I know that because I've had the unpleasant experience of having to serve with her.

My father-in-law was once Chairman of Military Affairs in the Senate, the latter part of the Wilson Administrations. He knew a lot about and was fond of the Army.

Reconciliation is a special budget procedure to change entitlement and tax laws. It cannot be filibustered and requires only a simple majority in the Senate to be passed. It is primarily intended for deficit and mandatory spending reduction.