W. Todd Akin: “I suppose I am a little concerned that maybe people worked about $775 million too long on it, and that is what I wanted…”

“I suppose I am a little concerned that maybe people worked about $775 million too long on it, and that is what I wanted to try to talk about just briefly. My concern is to try to put this thing into perspective. I understand the long hours that are spent, but perhaps the result of that is to take us a little too close to the trees to see the forest. The concern I have is that when I was just a little 2-year-old and we had an average family in this country, mom and dad and just two little kids, and dad would go off and earn a dollar at work, at the end of the time he had earned that dollar, three pennies of the dollar was spent on direct taxation, Federal, State, and local. All added together, three cents on the dollar. Five years ago, that three cents had jumped to 38 cents. Mom and dad, two kids, with dad earning a dollar, 38 cents on the dollar goes to direct taxation. That is more than the average family pays for food, clothing, and shelter combined. My question is: Are we perhaps buying too much government?”