I was delighted to see President-elect Obama indicate that he intends to hold a Fiscal Responsibility Summit in February.

The problem with what we are doing right now is injecting capital from the taxpayer into institutions.

You have been the voice in the wilderness for a little while.

Maybe we can take a little bit more, but we sure cannot take 31 percent of the gross national product and spend it.

He told me in a phone call about 10 days ago that he knows this is not going to be fun and it is not going to be easy, but that it simply must be done.

Our Federal Reserve is in a very tough position. It has two goals: sustaining the economy and price stability.

It is really the fiscal tsunami that is going to overwhelm our capacity as a Nation to be prosperous.

Should the stimulus package have in it aggressive enforcement mechanisms to discipline it, such as a hard sunset with supermajorities?

There are a lot of ideological issues here. You know, as a conservative, I obviously have an inherent dislike of having the Government expand dramatically and having, obviously, deficits of this size.

I think we should heavily tilt the stimulus package toward investment-based activity--you know, bridges, roads, infrastructure, fiberoptics, whatever--that is going to give us a return.

It is my attitude, and I think it is the attitude of our party on our side of the aisle within the Senate, that we want to be cooperative here because we realize the seriousness of the situation.