On the recordOctober 14, 2013
Tonight the country is facing great challenges--the challenges of ObamaCare, of runaway spending here in Washington, and of our fiscal crisis that is increasing our debt over and over again. Now is the time for solutions, and now is the opportunity that we have to get things right and to turn things around. I am looking forward tonight to visiting with my colleagues about the challenges we have before us as well as the opportunities. You know, this situation that we are in today kind of reminds me of a story that I heard a few years ago. I think it is very fitting to this time in history. This is a true story. There was a man who went hunting with his dog many years ago; and as he walked through the great outdoors and came back from his hunting trip, he noticed that his pants were covered with something that in Missouri we call cockleburs. If you are not from Missouri or that part of the country, it is basically a weed, and it leaves very prickly seed pods that are about the size of a dime. And they will stick to anything from your clothes to your pet's fur, or anything else that happens to brush against it as it passes by the weed. So this man got to looking at all of these cockleburs on his pants and his dog when he got back, and he was trying to pull them off and clean them off. And then he stopped a minute and got to look at that cocklebur and he got to thinking: What is it that causes this cocklebur to stick so well?…
