I have served in the Senate since December 2012 with seats on the Appropriations and Commerce committees and previously served as the lieutenant governor and in the state House. These positions provided me insights on Hawaii's priorities and how to effectively work with stakeholders to achieve meaningful results.

I think it accrues to Hawaii's benefit that I have friends in Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin. We're already geographically isolated, so it's really critical that we don't become politically isolated.

Local Arab partners and the Iraqi government must lead the fight against ISIL. U.S. military advisers are important to this effort, but we cannot be engaged in combat operations. That is why Congress must revoke the previous war authorization and define our appropriate role in defeating ISIL.

The tendency among Democrats, especially after a devastating loss, is to come up with either a new individual to lead us, a new strategy, a new slogan.

Either we start cutting the government and shrinking the size of government, or else we're going to face the political wrath of the American people.

Living standards in both the public and private sector have to be brought down. The private sector has to sell more abroad and consume less at home. The government sector has to get closer to just spending what it can collect in taxes.

Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession, problems in mortgage markets, the problems in the banking sector, the problems in government finance in countries like Greece, none of those problems were in present Canada.

When you start to look at completing the development of a modern professional army, when you talk about maturing a democracy, when you talk about development and the economic conditions that have to be addressed, a decade is not too short a period of time to talk about.