W. Todd Akin: “And that tradition very much reflected the mindset of my parents' generation, the people that fought World War II. My…”

“And that tradition very much reflected the mindset of my parents' generation, the people that fought World War II. My father is 89 and was with Patton in the Army. But there was a general way of thinking in that generation. And the mindset was that they were going to sacrifice a lot of things they wished they'd had as kids in order to give their kids something better. They're going to leave the campsite better than it was left for them. And so my parents' generation, if they made a mistake, it was they tended to spoil us. They tended to give us everything we wanted, whereas they had had to really--the other generation, they might not have had a college education but said, My son is going to be a doctor. My son is going to be an engineer. I'm going to make sure they have enough money to go to college, which I didn't have a chance to do. And that was their mindset. And that's what breaks my heart about such a boring subject as budgets is because of the fact that we're not following--we're leaving that campsite look like a dump truck full of litter just got dumped on it.”