People just want to hear some common sense... and I bring to bear the experience in local government and state government and national government - I was the first woman in history on the Senate Finance Committee - not to mention the diplomatic international experience.

As Michigan's voice on the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee I will continue working to make sure the next generation of advanced technologies and alternative fuel vehicles are made right here in America.

What if Barack Obama established a Presidential Advisory Committee that would meet once every couple of months bringing together the former presidents for a conference in order to seek their collective wisdom? There is a wealth of experience in former presidents that generally goes untapped.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

We created the Cabinet Committee on the Environment to review the environmental implications of all government initiatives. I think what made us successful was the fact that it was a sustained approach. We did something new every year.

In its report the Cox Committee concludes that China is using stolen U.S. design information to speed up its deployment of a new nuclear missile force.

I am persuaded that if any attempt is made to improve the education of the poor and such an unmanly spirit should guide the resolution of a society or committee for that purpose it would render the design abortive.

The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters the decision is made by committee and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.

Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota then Oxford College in Minnesota and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.

If we are to survive we must have ideas vision and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.