you are talking up a senate seat. >> i expect -- as recently as the last week of december, people said would you take the senate seat, i said, if you offer something, it would be rude to the people, i'm hoping i wasn't offered it. i was sitting in the caucus and realizing it's going to be equivalent in some ways to the new deal. the debt limit issue comes up and the sequester. there are conservatives who are going to try to use that to cut social security, cut medicare. they're going to try and shift the cuts that we have said we're going to make out of the military, protect the military, keep that, in fact, even further inflated beyond what our national security needs are, and make cuts in the environment and housing and transportation, and i just believe that i'm better prepared having just done what i have done to do this. it's not that i'd be the best interim senator ever. just that in these particular circumstances with very complex issues as kind of a continuat n