ST. CHARLES, Mo. – One day after Rep. Todd Akin vowed to stay in the race for US Senate, dismissing calls from across the Republican party to step aside, Sen. Claire McCaskill welcomed Akin back to the campaign by bashing him for abandoning veterans during his years in Congress.

 Visiting two VFW halls near St. Louis on Wednesday, McCaskill, the Democrat Akin is hoping to unseat here in Missouri, went through a list of Akin votes that took more than two minutes to recite.

 Audiences were mostly male and senior citizen.  Survivors of combat in Vietnam – and at least one World War II veteran – looked on beneath baseball caps decorated with military insignia as she accused Akin of blocking bonuses for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan and voting against health care benefits for reservists and national guard members.

 “So that’s kind of the list,” McCaskill said of Akin’s voting record.  “Now, I don’t have a list like that."

 The attack did not include any mention of the recent controversy embroiling Akin.

 Sunday, Akin told a television interviewer that women could biologically prevent pregnancies resulting from what he called “legitimate rape.” 

 The remarks set off a firestorm, but Wednesday McCaskill only alluded to them broadly.

 During a press conference outside a VFW home in nearby Overland, McCaskill brushed aside questions about Akin’s future.

 “The voters have spoken, and he’s the nominee,” McCaskill said.

 “We’re going to draw the contrasts that I think are necessary so that voters know that he’s outside the mainstream, he’s very extreme,” she added later.

 Tuesday, Akin let a deadline for withdrawing from the Senate race pass.

 He told NBC’s Matt Lauer during a Wednesday interview on the TODAY show that his nomination was a “decision made by the citizens of our state, not the party bosses.”

 McCaskill’s VFW visits were part of a so-called “Vets for Claire” listening tour that the campaign says was arranged prior to the Akin controversy.

 A VFW official in Overland asked reporters to hold McCaskill’s press conference outside the building, in order to keep the organization compliant with rules prohibiting political activity by 501(c)(3) charity groups.

WEST CHESTER, PA -- Presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan blamed President Barack Obama for putting “almost 44,000 jobs at stake” here in Pennsylvania because of the looming defense cuts.

Speaking outside the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center, Ryan argued that under the Obama administration, “you either lose defense jobs in Pennsylvania or put small businesses further in a competitive disadvantage to compete in the global economy and lose small business jobs.”

"I’ve got a good idea – why don’t we take away President Obama’s job and create jobs for everybody no matter what industry they are in. That’s a good stimulus project," Ryan said.

Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, voted for the debt ceiling deal last summer, which included the sequestration of defense spending.

In the year since then, Ryan has joined other House Republicans in passing legislation to put off those defense cuts by finding savings elsewhere. However, the Obama administration has rejected these calling it an unbalanced package since it would rely on cuts elsewhere, rather than include a mix of tax hikes. The president has vowed to veto any attempt to undo the sequester.

The Wisconsin congressman, who made his Pennsylvania debut today on the stump, first talked about sequestration -- the pending $500 billion in defense cuts -- on the campaign trail in Virginia on Aug. 17.

Both Virginia and Pennsylvania have a heavy military presence in their states.

Ryan declared here just outside of Philadelphia: “national defense is the first priority of the federal government.”

The seven-term congressman has had his national security credentials called into question since being announced as VP as he typically deals with domestic issues.

However, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that will air this evening, Ryan said he believes he has more experience with foreign policy than President Obama did when he took office in 2008.

“Well, most of the traveling I’ve done throughout my 14 years in Congress has been to the Middle East. You know, I’ve had men and women to war on more than one occasion. I’ve been to those funerals. I’ve talked to the widows and the wives and the parents. I’ve gone to Afghanistan and Iraq to meet with our troops, to learn from them. Obviously, I have a lot more experience than Barack Obama did when he became president. But if you take a look at our current posture, President Obama is quote-unquote, “leading from behind,” Ryan said.

Mitt Romney promised Monday to offer more specifics about how he would turn around the economy, offering detail on at least one policy plank by calling on Congress to halt automatic defense cuts set to take place next year.

"I'll describe in some depth my economic plans as we continue through the campaign," Romney said in response to CNBC's Larry Kudlow, who echoed criticism to Romney that his plans lacked specificity.

The presumptive GOP nominee has previously drawn criticism for generally avoiding specifying how his tax and spending plans would add up. In an interview last month on CBS, Romney refused to say, for instance, which tax breaks he would eliminate to finance his overall package of tax reforms.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP - Getty Images

Mitt Romney speaks at a small-business roundtable discussion at Endural, a manufacturer of plastic containers, on July 23 in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Nonetheless, Romney did offer new details about how he would prefer to handle the looming so-called "fiscal cliff," the cocktail of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts -- particularly to the defense budget -- set to snap into place on Jan. 1 barring action by Congress.

Romney, who's criticized President Obama for making cuts to defense spending, said in particular that Congress must delay the onset of the automatic defense cuts, which were included as part of last August's agreement to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. The defense cuts were inserted as an incentive for lawmakers to reach an overarching deal on fiscal reform, since the cuts were viewed as so distasteful of an alternative.

"This sequestration related to defense spending, in particular, has to be put off," Romney said.

The presidential campaign resumed more traditional form on Monday after taking a break for most of the weekend in mourning of victims in last Friday's mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater. Romney argued that it would be wrong to invoke politics, as they relate to gun control, so soon after the massacre. But he did defend the assault weapons ban he signed as governor, calling it a bipartisan compromise that expanded some gun rights, too.

"Well, actually the law that we signed in Massachusetts was a combination of efforts both on the part of those that were for additional gun rights and those that opposed gun rights, and they came together and made some changes that provided, I think, a better environment for both, and that's why both sides came to celebrate the signing of the bill," he said. "Where there are opportunities for people of reasonable minds to come together and find common ground, that's the kind of legislation I like."

Kudlow's full interview with Romney airs at 7 p.m. ET on CNBC.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) liked what he heard from former Vice President Dick Cheney today over lunch in the Capitol.

Cheney was on the Hill on Tuesday to meet with House and Senate Republicans to sound the alarm over automatic defense cuts set to take place on Jan. 1 as laid out in last summer's debt ceiling agreement.

“He probably talked more today than he did in eight years,” Graham told reporters, noting that Cheney seemed in "excellent" health and in "good spirits" following a heart transplant earlier this year.

According to Graham, Cheney, a former secretary of Defense, warned that $500 billion in cuts over the next 10 years would be devastating to long term planning against threats like Iran.

"He pointed out the stealth technology we used in the first Gulf War and precision guided munitions were a result of planning in the eighties," Graham told reporters. "And you know the next war, who knows what the next threats going to be. But, if you had to go into an Iran where you've got really hardened sights, you're going to have to have the most sophisticated accurate weapons possible."

Graham was quick to point out, “He didn’t say we should attack Iran.”

Cheney told Republicans, "You need to keep money flowing in predictable ways so you can plan for the next war."

Graham is advocating a one year fix to avoid $109 billion in defense cuts in 2013. He said he is willing to put revenue on the table in the form of fees, asset sales and ending deductions and loopholes combined with cuts across other parts of the government. He predicted he could bring other Republicans along to support revenue increases if the president wanted to negotiate. 

"Where is presidential leadership here? We need him," Graham said. "He should be calling a group of us. I could bring a pretty large number of Republicans, more than a handful that would sit down with the president and Democrats to find a way to do a combination of revenue, other government cuts to avoid at least 2013."

New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) also said today she supported a one year fix in the absence of a longer term solution.

On the other side of the aisle, Majority Leader Harry Reid said it was Cheney's ties to Halliburton that were motivating his concerns over defense cuts.

"Halliburton did extremely well during his time as vice president, and I assume there is going to be some concern about Halliburton again in this conversation they're going to have today," Reid told reporters.

A group of hawkish Senate Republicans announced their plan Thursday to prevent automatic defense cuts mandated by last summer's debt ceiling agreement, which are set to take effect in 2013.

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led a group of Republicans in detailing their plan to prevent a planned $110 billion from the 2013 defense budget by offering other offsetting cuts.

"It's time for the president to lead and accept his responsibilities as commander-in-chief and work with us to enact a plan that will reduce our debt and maintain our military preparedness," McCain said at a press conference on Capitol Hill.

The automatic cuts were contained in last summer's agreement to raise the nation's debt limit. The automatic defense cuts were included as an incentive for Republican members of the supercommittee -- the bipartisan panel charged with identifying $1.2 trillion in savings from the budget over the next 10 years -- to reach an agreement.

But the supercommittee failed, and now, Republicans are trying to undo the defense cuts -- the so-called "sequester" -- by offering different savings. McCain, joined by Republican Sens. Jon Kyl (AZ), John Cornyn (TX), Kelly Ayotte (NH) and Lindsey Graham (SC), offered a plan that would replace $110 billion of planned defense and non-defense cuts, and find an additional $17 billion in savings, by freezing federal salaries through mid-2014, and squeezing the federal workforce by 5 percent through attrition. For every three federal employees who leave, only two would be hired to replace them.

Kyl said he hoped Democrats would support these ideas because they won't see cuts to social programs and have previously supported pay freezes and attrition in parts of the government. Kyl also pushed back on any suggestion that Republicans are hypocritical for being "pro-jobs" while pushing for job cuts in the federal government.

"We're not laying anybody off, we're not proposing to fire anybody," Kyl said.

And House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) lended his voice to the fight, questioning the Obama administration's involvement on the issue.

"The defense portion of the sequester, in my view, would clearly hollow our military," Boehner said at his weekly press conference, "The question I would pose is where's the White House? Where's the leadership that should be there to ensure that this sequester does not go into effect?"

That lack of effort by the administration to undo the sequestered stems from President Obama's stiff veto threat of any effort to undo the automatic cuts unless a balanced, comprehensive deal could be reached.

"Already some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. My message to them is simple: No. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending," the president said on Nov. 21. “There will be no easy off-ramps on this one. We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure."

But perhaps as a bit of foreshadowing of the impending fight over the automatic cuts, a group of 127 Democrats signed a letter to the president urging him against bowing to pressure and find other savings to replace the defense cuts.

"We stand ready to work with you over the next year to put America back on a firm financial footing and will vote to sustain your veto of any effort to repeal all or part of the scheduled sequester," the letter reads.

NBC's Frank Thorp contributed.