W. Todd Akin

Well, you know, I hate to admit how many years I've served in the legislative body. I started by saying I've served in the majority, in the minority and now in the wilderness. As to most legislation I've seen that works pretty well…

We are basically muzzling a lot of the representative process. As you said, there have been different analogies. You talked about your son with a candy bar. Another one was the idea of a kitchen that has a broken sink. When you hire a…

So, in other words, what's happening is you have other approaches to solving some of the problems of health care, not trying to have the government take it all over but, rather, to fix various component parts. We have a Rules Committee. If…

It sounds like what you're saying is that you can chrome- plate a pig, but it's still a pig when you're done.

You know, I kind of like this chart because I think that some entrepreneur could make money with this chart. If you were to just shrink it down a little smaller and add some additional lines, you could start over here. These are the…

This last year and a half has been different; I have served in the wilderness because we have actually come up to the edge of the abyss with a piece of legislation that promises to be so threatening and so destructive to our country that…

Let me just respond to what you're saying because maybe I'm being too pessimistic about this. But let's take a look at the format. The format is we're going to huddle behind closed doors. We're going to produce a bill. You get 24 hours to…

This evening we stand just before a day-- tomorrow--of great political drama. I am trained as an engineer, and not much of an expert on drama or plays, but I have at least one theory about acting in plays and drama, and that is, usually…

Well, I thank you, gentleman, for joining me today. And the question at the beginning was is this going to be a credible theatrical performance tomorrow or are people just going to tune in to the Olympics. I guess we'll see tomorrow what's…

What you are saying, Congressman Kingston, a billion here and a billion there, that starts to add up, doesn't it?

Wait a minute. This is one of these ones just like we are talking about in that health care plan. This doesn't compute, does it? We say we are going to freeze something that we just raised by over 25 percent in a year or two. That's…

Is that bipartisanship or is that ramming full speed ahead? That's what it seems like to me.

Of course the Department has grown tremendously as we've become more dependent on Middle Eastern oil. What was it they said? The compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the post office or whatever.

Did you know there was a report that was done on the Department of Education? I think it was during the days of Ronald Reagan. Their conclusion in the report was that if a foreign country had done to America what the Department of…

You know, it was interesting to me that there was a country--it was the U.S.--and they had a theory. Their theory was that the government should provide you with a job, with an education. They should provide you with health care. They…

I think the American public is concerned about unemployment. Somebody made the comment that unemployment is an important issue, but it really becomes critical when you are the one that is unemployed. Yet my understanding is that this…

That's what we called it during the last hour. We called it ``Political Drama.'' You know, there isn't anything, first of all, that the Republicans can do that could block his bill. The problem he has got is he doesn't even have enough…

I would support that in a heartbeat. If you're not proud enough of it to put it out there, then you shouldn't be sticking it out there at all.

Gentleman, this is my 22nd year--I hate to admit it--in an elected office, and I have seen 22 years' worth of bills, 12 in the Missouri legislature, and this is my 10th year here. I have never seen a bill like this that is going to affect…

It seems like, to me, what you're talking about is, in a way you are defining something that's bipartisan, where people in good faith come to the table, they all have some ideas, they talk about them and say, Well, I don't like this part…

George Bush's worst debt year was with a Nancy Pelosi Congress, and that was about $400-something billion. I agree with you that was too much debt. And that was '08. You go to '09 with President Obama, and his very first year was $1.4…

Some of us stood here and said, This is not going to work. I was standing on this floor a year ago and I said, This stimulus plan will not work. It wasn't because some of us were such geniuses. It is because we had learned from Henry…

There just doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency there, does it? We've got 36 States that have legislation they're considering trying to protect their citizens from us demanding that those citizens have to buy the government-approved…

Yes. We're going to have to do some showing down in the State of Missouri. We're not too bad on oatmeal, but I'll tell you what is something, I think, of a little bit of New England that I would want to recommend, and that is that you'd…

That's what I find is almost comical in this whole thing because, you know, you take a look at the American public--and this is my 10th year in the U.S. Congress, and I've got constituents that are reading this stuff, and they know the…