Some of the best preparation I had for coming to Congress is being a football referee. Because you've got to make a decision, and no matter what you do, someone's unhappy with you.

There's nothing like making a decision when you're a football referee. It really pushes you to be very clear - to make that decision and to sell it to everybody who's there. You believe in it, but you have to make sure other people believe in it, too.

There's nothing like having a football coach yelling at you at homecoming in front of a bunch of people. You do kind of get used to being inflappable in front of all that heated emotion. At times, that's very useful in business.

We don't have a lot of technology people in Congress, so one of the basic things is to help people be educated on how technology works: what's there, where is it headed, what some of the challenges and opportunities are.

In this constantly evolving world, Congress must be a good steward of policy to ensure our laws at least keep pace.

Government has not been good about being good stewards of policy.