Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system.

Our party is a diverse one, as is my home state of Illinois.

In Illinois, where legislators are paid $45,000, plus as much as $10,000 for leadership work, about half are full-time politicians.

I've always backed energy independence policies, but I've heard from people on this issue like no other. The energy interests of Illinois are far broader and deeper than my North Shore district.

Tonight we send a message to our party that here in Illinois, there will be a new generation of Republican leaders and we will fight to provide a better tomorrow for future generations. We've made clear the status quo is no longer acceptable.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents' boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing 'Amazing Stories,' with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.

Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system.

Our party is a diverse one as is my home state of Illinois.

President Obama's fight for rural America is personal. He was raised by a single mom and grandparents from Kansas. He hails from a farming state Illinois.

In Illinois community migrant homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year.

Many seventh graders I know in Illinois as well as around the Nation are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.