When I was a prosecutor in Kansas City, my job was to fight for justice and safety for all citizens in my community. Equal access to justice under the law is an American value embedded in the fabric of our legal and political system - the idea that anybody, powerful or not, can have their day in court.
As a member of the Aging Committee, I'm no stranger to fighting for America's seniors.
I'm the only United States Senator in the country that I'm aware of that's had the far left up on TV and the far right up on TV against me at the same time.
I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.
If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems.
Only in Washington would the Republican operatives get the entire press corps ginned up over the notion that I'm going to be home campaigning instead of going to a bunch of worthless parties at a convention that's only being held to do something we all know is going to happen anyway.
Corporate governance is a huge issue too. We don't have women on these corporate boards. More than half of the students in law school are women, more than half of the women, I think, in medical school now are women.
What we have done with No Child Left Behind is squeeze the creativity out of the classroom because teachers have begun to just teaching to the test.
I was in the room with, you know, more than a dozen Republicans trying to negotiate the stimulus. Most of them decided the politics of the situation meant they should walk away, even if it wasn't responsible in terms of what our country needed right then.
I think, first of all, you know, Washington has a bad habit of a very short attention span.
I have been very independent from day I arrived in Washington.
I think I'm the last Democrat left in the Senate after Russ Feingold was defeated that won't take earmarks.
I voted against my party with some frequency, because of my independence. I've just got to remind Missourians that I am independent and that I try to call them like I see them, and sometimes my party is wrong on some things.
My first obligation is my job. It's very hard to really get into campaign mode when you've got to focus on doing the work.
When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.
When the Tea Party comes to town, compromise goes out the door.
You know, we've got to be responsible about our debt. We don't want the United States to ever be a dead beat, and not be able to pay its bills, either to our soldiers who are fighting or to Social Security recipients.
Obviously, I have been a pro-choice candidate for my entire political career, and obviously there is controversy always surrounding this issue.
I don't know how anyone can keep a straight face and say they are for deficit reduction while they insist on a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, completely unpaid for.
Do I want Social Security to be there for my kids and my grandkids? Absolutely. Will I fight like a tiger to make sure that we protect Social Security? I absolutely will.
