President Obama has offered a plan with 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction over a decade with two and a half dollars of spending reductions for every one dollar of revenue increases and tight controls on future spending. It's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

Deficits mean future tax increases pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.

It's a funny thing - when I'm crazed with work spending time with my children relaxes me. Yet at the end of a long weekend with them the very thing I need to relax is a little work and time away from them!

Somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the food you eat has been touched by immigrant hands and it is fair to say some of them are not here as they should be here. But if you didn't have these folks you would be spending a lot more - three four or five times more - for food or we would have to import food and have all the food security risks.

People see you onstage and the glamorous side but they don't see you traveling 600 miles a night eating truck stop food and spending by yourself staring at walls.

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.

The confidence is really driven by the woman - whether she can have the confidence that there will be enough earning or income to finance all the domestic spending - but also by the middle-income class which for many Asian countries has become the growth power for the economy.

It is incumbent upon each of us to improve spending and savings practices to ensure our own individual financial security and preserve the collective economic well-being of our great society.

If I'm not writing well I'm not happy. If I'm not spending enough time with my family I'm not happy. If I'm not connecting to friends or if I don't work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme.

I enjoy being busy I really do. Remember I'm the stub end of the railroad. I have no family so I'm not taking busy time away from people that I should be spending it with. So I'm just relaxing and enjoying it.