I intend to work very, very hard with my colleague Senator Durbin to make sure that we strengthen this agency and strengthen its ability to protect America's children.

I believe that, again, that the toys that our innocent children play with, that those toys should have the utmost scrutiny before those toys end up in our homes.

Ms. Cowles, we only have a few moments. I just want to ask you in your testimony you mentioned the weak-kneed recalls.

It's a tragedy, and it's shameful that the CPSC as we sit right now does not have a quorum to conduct the American public's business.

We have to change the laws in Congress, appropriate the money to get it done.

It's time to turn the page for hope.

We believe that we rise or fall as one people.

Parents will need to make sure their kids turn off the TV once in a while, and put away the video games, and start hitting the books.

I think about my grandfather, who first became a father when my mother was born on a Kansas army base at the outset of World War II. He left to fight fascism in Europe while my grandmother stayed behind and pitched in on a bomber assembly…

There are fewer and fewer families who can tell this story today.

And of course, though I did not know him well, every year around Father's Day I think of my own father. He and my mother divorced when I was only two years old, and for most of my life I knew him only through the letters he sent and the…

And instead of waiting every ten years for Congress to fight over raising the minimum wage, I will finally make the minimum wage a living wage by permanently indexing it to inflation so that it actually pays the bills.

My plan would also support families with children by expanding the Child Tax Credit to an additional 600,000 more Americans, who would receive $1,000 per child.

The jobs that remain pay less and offer fewer benefits, as employers have succeeded in busting up unions and cutting back on health care and pensions to stay competitive with the companies abroad that are paying their workers next to…

So, for those Americans who have been searching unsuccessfully for employment, I will invest $50 million in programs that will place willing workers into transitional jobs and train them for permanent ones.

It has not been lost on either Michelle or myself that our family's story has been America's story - a story of opportunity, and possibility, and the tireless pursuit of a dream that was always within reach.

The second step we'll take to strengthen families is to ensure that working Americans are not impoverished Americans.

He began to find comfort in his faith, and when he left jail, he moved in with an aunt who expected him to behave well and study hard. And he did. He is now at Benedict College and will be president of the student council there next year.