Christopher J. Dodd: “I have great respect for the exile community and what they have been through.”

As Franklin Roosevelt said so eloquently more than 80 years ago, it is fear, and that fearing fear is what has, I think, had an awful lot to do with the lack of confidence in our country, and we need to get our confidence back.

I think we should look at our choices. We can come down to where we allocate resources and how we make choices between the issue of tax cuts for the top 1 percent of income earners versus investing in a No Child Left Behind bill.

Putting that together, have we seen the wealthy, who were given huge tax cuts over the past 3 years, turn around and spend their tax cuts on these luxury items, while average workers of course have seen their wages stagnate?

I think the high rate at one point in the Nixon Administration is we were spending something close to 6 percent of the Federal budget on secondary and elementary education in this country, the Federal Government was.