Political Quotes

On the recordMarch 17, 2010
I think that's part of the reason why you see this tremendous opposition to this legislation. And, you know, one of the things we did, trying to get some kind of perspective on some of these main points, imposes half a trillion in Medicare cuts. The Republican alternative didn't do that, but the President's bill and the Senate bill does. It enacts a job-killing tax hike and government regulations costing hundreds of billions of dollars. The old Democrat bill and the President's new bill do that, and the Republican thing doesn't do it. I mean, we have a lot of reforms. I think you're a cosponsor/sponsor of a bunch of bills that reform things in health care, but it's not a complete government takeover of the system, and we're not talking about raiding Medicare and all of these other sad provisions. Now, one of the things that I think Americans are sensitive to is unemployment. I mean, there are a lot of people out there without a job. According to the government numbers, there are about 10 percent unemployed Americans. And that is not counting the people who have been out of a job more than a year, because they take them off. They just wipe them off the charts. So you have got a lot of unemployment, and now what you're going to do is you're going to enact these tax hikes on small businesses, which is no better way to get them to want to get rid of employees than to run their taxes up or their costs of having employees.
Said by
W. Todd Akin
Missouri

Editor's note · Context

The speaker is discussing opposition to healthcare legislation and its impact on Medicare and unemployment.

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Jun 8, 2012

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On rollcall No. 137 and 138, I was delayed and unable to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall No. 137 and ``aye'' on rollcall No. 138. ____________________

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