"Any final proposal from the [President's Fiscal] Commission should do what is right for our children and grandchildren's economic security as well as for our nation's fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare. And it must strengthen America's middle-class families."
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted in It's All Politics, npr.org, Nov. 10
"The American people know the economy doesn't work. They're suffering and they're angry because of that and you're going to have to come up with a way to create jobs and get the economy back on the move. They're frustrated not because too much was done, but too little was done. But now that you're in the governing structure, you just can't say no."
— AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to Mike Duncan, chairman of American Crossroads, the Republican political action group, AFL-CIO NOW blog, Nov. 3.