The 111th Congress convenes in Washington this month. As new and returning members of Congress are sworn into office America faces a pressing set of challenges. Our economy is limping along, shedding jobs each month. Home prices are declining at record rates. The federal government is stuck in a mantra of bailout mania.

During the summer of 2008 anyone predicting that gas prices would fall by more than half in a few months would have been laughed off the national stage. Anyone suggesting that the federal government would commit $8.5 trillion to bailouts and loan guarantees (when the entire federal budget is only $3 trillion) would have faced a similar fate.

President Ronald Reagan famously declared that "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Today our economy is facing serious difficulties, mainly as a result of untold billions of bad assets clogging the balance sheets of financial institutions and greed by some on Wall Street.

As Labor Day weekend passes, it is clear that this has not been the summer North Carolinians had planned on. Too many families have been forced to cancel their vacations and trim their budgets in order to compensate for the sting of high gas prices.

While the high price of gasoline is the major issue on the minds of most Americans, another prevalent topic of discussion is healthcare. Americans have traditionally enjoyed the best, most accessible, patient-centered health care in the world and I am fighting to see that tradition continue.