W. Todd Akin

Now, the idea of cutting taxes in a recession and cutting Federal spending is not new. JFK understood that principle. He cut taxes when he was President during a recession and put us back on a good economic footing. Ronald Reagan had the…

The point of the matter is if you don't have national security, you don't have any other kind of security.

Oh, boy. Well, we have another gentleman here, coming a little farther from the west, Congressman Bishop, who is joining us. He is also a guy who has had some experience in the business world, and also as a teacher and a leader here on the…

As I recall, gentleman, at that time, weren't there people who said that income tax could possibly get as high as 5 percent and they were laughed off the floor of the Congress, that income taxes could get as high as 5 percent? Am I right…

So what happened--let me see if I understand this. The sales tax holiday was not a total cutting of all the sales tax; it just reduced it much lower.

Well, I think that Ronald Reagan, you know, he had a way of putting complicated things in simple words. He said we are buying more government than we can afford. That is not a bad summary of the situation. And it hasn't gotten better since…

It's just a treat, Congressman Bishop, to have you here with us today talking about a very important subject, something that is on the front of the minds, I think, of many Americans, understanding that we are buying way too much government…

I think the whole country needs to say a big ``thank you'' to you, because what you are doing is trying to make Congress just a little more efficient and do a few commonsense things. A lot of people might not say this thinking outside the…

It is interesting that you talk about, there was a great little short book, and I don't remember the title of it, gentleman, that came out with some of the very facts that you just mentioned, and it was a study of how the government in the…

It used to be a very boring place to be a Congressman down here because there were almost no laws on the books. The Federal laws, to begin with, in terms of laws about right and wrong, were, one of them was a law against piracy on the high…

I keep thinking an awful lot of Americans must be starting to feel the same way I do: that the government is not a servant anymore; that it's a fearful master. We were warned by the forefathers that if you let your government, your Federal…

Well, those are some great recommendations here. To reinforce what you've said, I didn't have time to get some of the charts that we normally have printed, but here's some examples. We've got 342 economic development programs. Do you think…

So we were just talking about now you've got the situation with the Federal Government spending a third more than it takes in. So we've got to figure out some way of how we're going to skin this cat. And one way is to just try to take a…

If we sort of back up a little bit from what you have said and take a look, and the subject here that we are talking about today is cutting government. If you take a look at the Department of Energy, the Department of Energy was founded…

We are talking about the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, it sets the whole framework for what this country rests on, and you've got two words that are loaded with meaning. The first one is the general defense. That's national security…

Oh, wait. And $110 billion a month. That used to be the deficit in a whole year.

Well, I appreciate your medical expertise and your overview. Obviously, if the Federal Government isn't jumping into taking over all of health care, there is going to be a lot more in the private sector. We will maybe get into that a…

10 percent or whatever. 130 programs serving the disabled. Do we need 130? Maybe it would be better to consolidate, just do a couple of good ones. And then 130 programs serving at-risk youth. And so these are all of these things where you…

I appreciate an opportunity to talk about a subject that I think has been on a lot of Americans' minds over particularly the last couple of years, and it's the subject of spending cuts in the Federal Government. Now, unless people are…

And the interesting thing is that if you take George Bush's biggest deficit year, which was when Speaker Pelosi was here in Congress, 2009, his biggest deficit was one-third of the first Obama, which was $1.4 trillion. So what is the…

When you take a look at the numbers and we're spending a third more than what we're taking in, we know we've got to do some cutting.

Now I think there were Federalist papers that were written to help make that point and to define the fact that to promote general welfare is not a clause big enough to run tanks through and say that anything that seems like a nice thing to…

So let's say that we get what you've been working for, and let's just say by some great miracle that we were able to stop that ObamaCare. Now that would save a whole, whole lot of money, wouldn't it, in terms of--

Hey, Doctor, it's a treat to have you on the floor. And I'm going to run over to, moving a little bit from Georgia to the West, to the great State of Utah, and Congressman Bishop, you've joined us on the floor a number of times. And one of…

And so I want to extend my personal thanks for the fact that what you don't see here just for a few minutes' discussion on the floor was hours and hours of tours through shipyards, all kinds of details, talking to all kinds of people and…