You and I paid it and our constituents paid it. All right. And it is gone. It comes to this place here. We then decide what we are going to do with it. Now, if our people in our communities or our States want to get the money back, a lot…

And I am not saying that bonuses for teachers are the way to go. But we ought to be working with teachers, with parents, and with others to have these laboratories around the country. And that doesn't mean that every class is a laboratory…

Absolutely. What you want to have happen is you and I both want accountability. But as technology changes, and as teaching changes, and as practices in the classroom changes, you know, I want Missouri developing an accountability model, I…

Right. But the standard has been in place for 8 years. Everybody knows it is wrong and it doesn't work. Technology has moved to the point where it says we can track Johnny individually. And if he moves from one school to another, we can…

Tonight I come to talk about a variety of issues. You know, clearly the country faces tough times, clearly our States face very, very difficult times. And over the last few months we have had the opportunity to go and to listen to our…

We came at it from the right and the left. But we came together because we both saw the inherent problems with this bill, and we had an amendment that we were hoping that if the NEA, if the National Education Association had joined with us…

I can tell you, we worked with the NEA, the National Education Association. We worked with them, Barney Frank and I. Barney Frank, one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle, we fought this issue, and he came at it from a very…

It paints a picture. Because if you come to Washington and you ask, Do you know the kids in the fifth grade at South Middle School or West Middle School? And it is kind of like, What town? Well, in Holland. No, I don't. And they have gone…

You are exactly right, and this is where Governors need to stand up and say no. I think with the health care bill, I think wasn't there a movement in like 29 States or something where State legislators were saying, No, we don't want it…

And what you will see again is the States becoming incubators of ideas. Missouri or Michigan, we will compete, and you will get some great ideas, we will get some great ideas. You will have some bad ideas and we will have some bad ideas…

The other thing that we will see is we will see that at a State level you can respond. When something doesn't work, you change it. You and I are both very familiar that there is a key component of No Child Left Behind that does not work…

It is like, you are announcing this at 11:30 at night and there is only a few of us that have nothing better to do and we are watching C-SPAN so we know, but nobody else will, and they'll find out in the morning? But that is the…

That's a scary thing, and that is exactly the type of process that people don't like. And they don't like the fact that when the President comes out and says during a campaign, when we get to the health care negotiations, it is going to be…

Well, we know what they think because we saw it a couple of weeks ago in Massachusetts where they said this is absolutely wrong and we're going to stop it. And effectively what the people of Massachusetts did, in that momentous Tuesday…

Absolutely. You know, because you take a look at a State like Michigan, and I think it is probably the same in Missouri, and you take a look at the State and you say, well, my State this year is starting the year off with--or they are…

What is happening right now in grass-roots America is very, very healthy. People are engaged. And as they have gone through the last year, they saw the passage of a stimulus bill, $787 billion, then they saw a cap- and-tax bill passed in…

I have seen this up close and personal in Michigan. And you may have remembered over the last 18 months that as President Obama was developing his economic strategy, he had the Governor of Michigan sitting next to him quite frequently. And…

I really do believe, and I want to build off the thought that you had, is that our constituents want us to deconstruct Washington. They don't want us to tear it down. They want us to constructively go through the process and shed the…

It is kind of like Charlie Brown. How many times are you going to pull the football away?

No Child Left Behind was a bill that I voted against because I believed in parental control, I believed in local control, and I believed in State control. I want to deconstruct the Education Department and return the rights back to the…

The Louisiana purchase. Then we have the deal for Nebraska which says even though you're, as a State, you're pretty healthy--you only have an unemployment rate of under 5 percent--but you don't have to pick up this unfunded mandate that…

I thank my colleague, Congressman Akin. This is a time where we've got the great State of Michigan, the great State of Missouri, the Show-Me State. It's now time for this Congress to show the people of Missouri, to show the people of…

Here's how we start our op-ed. I like our title. Of course, I helped write it. We call it ``Storming the Castle.'' On January 19, the people of Massachusetts stormed the castle of the political elite and toppled it to the ground. After…

Washington, D.C., as an institution has become tone deaf. And you've got solutions. You know what the solutions are. You can fix the problem in Michigan, you can fix the problem in Missouri. It's as simple as what JFK did, what Ronald…

Just like the gentleman demonstrated in Massachusetts, the people are not tone deaf. They think we are. And they know Washington is.