As the daughter of immigrants, growing up in New York City, you are either at the table or on the menu.

I take the definition and title of my job - Representative - seriously. That's what I will be above and beyond everything else.

It's nice to be a woman, and it's nice to be an Asian. But what's more important is what I can bring back to my district.

I want to see America thrive. I want to see all different families here succeed.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

We're facing a natural disaster in the middle of an economic disaster. The federal government has to balance its budget the way our families do.

The family is the first economy. If the family breaks down, well, government gets bigger because of the consequences of family breakdown. We see in the neighborhoods where there are no marriages and there are no two-parent families.

I will leave the U.S. Congress when the term for which I was elected expires in January 2011 and return to the practice of law with a sense of duty fulfilled.