Mitch Daniels

Finally, treat domestic energy production as the economic necessity it is and the job creator it can be. Drill, and frack, and lease, and license, unleash in every way the jobs potential in the enormous energy resources we have been denying ourselves.

Government does not create jobs, it only creates the conditions that make jobs more or less likely.

In fact, it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it.

The public is increasingly disgusted with a steady diet of defamation, and prepared to reward those who refrain from it.

We see government's mission as fostering and enabling the important realms - our businesses, service clubs, Little Leagues, churches - to flourish.

If our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'

Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb.

Our educational results lag behind other states, and other nations, but worse still, behind the potential of the kids and the devoted teachers in our classrooms.

Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

When business leaders ask me what they can do for Indiana, I always reply: 'Make money. Go make money. That's the first act of corporate citizenship. If you do that, you'll have to hire someone else, and you'll have enough profit to help one of those non-profits we're so proud of.'

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.

There is nothing inconsistent about having a conservative outlook and being vigorous.