As they see it.

"The lame excuses in Washington about so-called unavoidable debt and deficits look even weaker when compared to the responsible job the states are doing. ... States are managing their money. And it's not as though states don't have urgent needs like the federal government. States face real challenges in funding items like education, health care and prisons."

--Editorial in the Tennessean during NCSL's 2006 Strong States, Strong Nation annual meeting in Nashville.

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"The universe of offshore tax cheating has become so large that no one, not even the United States government, could go after all of it."

--U.S. Senator Carl Levin, Michigan, whose staff ran a Senate investigation into tax fraud, to The New York Times.

"None of these apologies are effective because no one believes them anymore."

--Chuck Todd, editor of the daily political tip-sheet, Hotline, to The New York Times about the recent wave of politicians apologizing for saying politically incorrect things in public.

"Where's the money coming from?"

--D.B. Smit, commissioner of Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles to the Associated Press on the impact of the 2005

Real ID Act on state budgets.

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"You like to think you can shut it down, but once you're out here and you realize how vast this border area is, you realize how difficult it...