Michele Bachmann: The Reasoned Reformer from Minnesota
Jul 8th, 2011 | By Tim George | Category: Meet the Candidates, Politics | Print This Article
Michelle Bachman, a former Minnesota State senator, has served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. As a founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, she solidified national attention with her official Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address earlier in 2011. She is a longtime advocate for foster children and adoptive parents, living out that commitment personally with 5 children and 23 foster children.
Background
Representative Bachmann, born in 1956, is a graduate of Winona State University, Oral Roberts School of Law, and the College of William and Mary School of Law. She was an attorney for the Internal Revenue Service from 1988 until 1993, a position that led to her advocacy for a simplified tax code and tax payer rights. She and her husband reside in Stillwater, Minnesota, where they own a Christian counseling service with over 40 employees. With five children and 23 foster children along with her advocacy for foster and adoptive children, she also is a member of the bipartisan Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Advisory Board.
Political Career
Bachmann’s political career began in the Minnesota State Senate, where she served from 2000-2006. As a state senator, she championed a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Her experience working within the IRS led to her strong advocacy for simplification of the tax code and reduction of taxes on families and small businesses. In 2006 she was elected to represent the 6th Congressional District of Minnesota and was reelected in 2008.
Representative Bachmann began to move to national prominence as a voice for the Tea Party movement from within Congress. In 2010 she founded the House Tea Party Caucus and subsequently delivered the ‘Tea Party response’ to President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address. In that response she made the following powerful points:
- When Barack Obama became our president, unemployment was 7.8%, and our national debt stood at what seemed like a staggering $10.6 trillion… the President’s strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money. The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8%. Not only did that plan fail to deliver, but within three months, the national jobless rate spiked to 9.4%. It hasn’t been lower for 20 straight months. While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs.
- Here’s a few suggestions for fixing our economy. The president could stop the EPA from imposing a job-destroying cap-and-trade system. The president could support a balanced budget amendment. The president could agree to an energy policy that increases American energy production and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.
- The president could also turn back some of the 132 regulations put in place in the last two years, many of which will cost our economy $100 million or more. And the president should repeal Obamacare and support free-market solutions, like medical malpractice reform and allowing all Americans to buy any health care policy they like anywhere in the United States.
This speech, along with her rational approach to reform, has earned her the label of a “reasoned reformer” among conservatives and a wide swath of independents and Republicans. She is also known to be unafraid to buck her own party, as she did over TARP during the Bush Presidency. Finally, Bachman embraces bipartisanism when it makes sense, like in attempts to curtail earmark spending.
As a member of the House Financial Services Committee, she has been deeply involved in oversight of financial sectors including housing, real estate and banking. Because of her tenure on that committee, she has been a consistent opponent to the taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street. More recently Bachmann was appointed by House Speaker John Boehner to a position on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, allowing for a role in overseeing the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community
Issues and Views: Climate Change
As a U.S. Representative, Michelle Bachmann has been a consistently vocal opponent of climate change legislation. As an opponent of Cap and Trade Legislation, she stated, “Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural; it is not harmful…. We’re being told we have to reduce this natural substance to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the earth.”
Domestic Oil and Gas Production
Bachmann is an advocate for increased domestic oil and natural gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Outer Continental Shelf. After returning from a tour of ANWR, Bachmann emerged as one of the House’s most outspoken proponents for lifting the moratorium on oil and gas exploration there. She has championed a bill to open 200,000 acres of the Arctic reserve to oil drilling and establish a “Coastal Impact Aid” fund to protect surrounding native communities from any adverse impact.
Health Care/Obamacare
Bachmann has used her speech times in Congress to assail the President’s health care bill at every turn. Never shy to speak forcefully, she was quoted in 2009: “This cannot pass. What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.” She has also offered positive and workable alternatives to health care reform including tort reform, insurance portability, health savings accounts, and an end to a multiplicity of state regulations that hinder private insurance companies from competing.
Environmental Protection Agency
Bachman is a longtime critic of the waste and intrusiveness of the EPA. In a recent debate she called the government agency the “job-killing organization of America.”
The Bottom Line
There is no doubt Michelle Bachman has the credentials to run for President. She has a solid private and public sector career track record and sits on two of the most important House Committees. The leftist media loves to attack her, which can only heighten her appeal to true conservatives. Some have called her the thinking man’s Sarah Palin. Whether that is fair to Palin or not, it certainly illustrates the position she has begun to assume in the conservative movement. The Washington Post and other national outlets declared her a clear winner in the recent New Hampshire Republican debate in spite of Romney’s lead in the polls.
Hard-core libertarians and liberals both see her as unacceptable. She is staunchly anti-abortion, and she is against American involvement in Libya but doesn’t follow Ron Paul’s isolationist tract either. Her response to a questioner at the New Hampshire debate, however, illustrated why Michelle Bachman is a force to be reckoned with. The questioner, a long-time Republican volunteer, worried Bachman would be too conservative for voters in the party like him. Her reply brought the longest single ovation of the night:
I’m the chairman of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. And what I’ve seen is unlike how the media has tried to wrongly and grossly portray the Tea Party, the Tea Party is really made up of disaffected Democrats, independents, people who’ve never been political a day in their life. People who are libertarians, Republicans. It’s a wide swath of America coming together. I think that’s why the left fears it so much. Because they’re people who simply want to take the country back. They want the country to work again.
And I think there’s no question … this election will be about economics. It will be about how will we create jobs, how will we turn the economy around, how will we have a pro-growth economy. That’s a great story for Republicans to tell. President Obama can’t tell that story. His report card right now has a big failing grade on it, but Republicans have an awesome story to tell. We need every one of us in a three-legged stool. We need the peace through strength of Republicans, we need the fiscal conservatives, we need the social conservatives. We need everybody to come together because we’re going to win. Just make no mistake about it.
I want to announce tonight: President Obama is a one-term president.
©2013 Off The Grid News
Loading ...
I’m heavily leaning toward Michele right now! No one else even seems to get that next year’s election is not about politics-as-usual. It may be our last/best hope to stop an economic disaster.
YES the next election IS about Politics as usual – getting rid of it! Until finance reform and Lobbist laws close the revolving door there will be nothing else. Unfortunately, the Republican Party keeps putting up “Token Women” like Palin and Bachman that are dumb as a box of rocks. There are better and more qualified candidates. Bachman never even had a “real” job. She worked for the IRS (public) full and part time while she had kids. Then helped found a private charter school and was forced out after a year after violating the rules separating church and state as regards financing of the school. Then got elected to public office. No public or private sector experience coming up through the ranks – she likes to start at the top. Never paid the dues to get the experience to even run a preschool! So she’s religious – I love my pastors wife but I don’t want her running the country!!! DITTO, Ditto, Ditto for Palin! They’re both out there with politics as UNUSUAL because they don’t know how to do it!!! Herman Cain paid hid dues in the Navy and Federal Reserve, private companies and has a respectable background from which to UNDERSTAND the system so he can CHANGE it.
MIchele Bachmann has repeatedly tried to use her governemental position to force her religious beliefs on her constituents, this is not an acceptable option as President of the United States. While I certainly support many of her religious beliefs, our constitution does not allow for the President to use their office to force their beliefs on others. I can’t believe that someone who has in the past tried to use her power in that way will suddenly change simply because she is elected to higher office. Last I checked, the Bible specifically tells us not to judge but to love and share God’s Word, the language and approach she has use toward those she feels are sinful – I think specifically of how hateful some of her speeches have been related to homosexuals – are not an approach I can support in any way.
I also want to clear up one point made in this article, Ron Paul is not an isolationist; he supports the use of our military to deal with direct threats to our nation. The direction it appears that Michele Bachmann and many of the other GOP candidates want to take is to continue to use our military to try to force our beliefs about the role of government on other countries. Our military was never intended for that purpose but simply for the protection of our country and our citizens. Please refer to your US Constitution for additional clarification on this point.
Michele Bachmann is not the answer, she is just more of the same old, same old.
you better go back through our history and read statements and letters of our past presidents! They did not shy away from pronouncing God in ANYTHING….! You are a deceived little liberal that better wake up…there is NO separation of church and state and you better hope thats true…because if God pulls out of the equation, this country is DONE!!!
Michele did not vote the way that her constituents wanted her to vote. She voted to RAISE the debt ceiling. No way I’m voting for her now.
people like bachman,regan,fox news and the rest of you greedy self serving no tax, deregulation which really means continuing to pillage this country with impunity,dont stand a chance.People are waking up to your lies and propaganda,so why dont you all move to china and let this country get back to what our forefathers ment it to be.
@44festus,
excuse me, but the only ones pillaging this nation are Obama and his crony democrats. Get your facts straight, and stop being an idealogue. We have no room nor use for idealology in this country with the dire straight we are in right now.
Michelle Bachmann would be a fantastic president! I deeply agree with her strong conservative, Christian, and common sense principles. We must turn back to God and how our founding fathers built this country. We have got to cut spending and entitlements, preserve marriage as one man for one woman, and protect our freedoms from over reaching government. I will stand with anyone who stands for these principles.
Really, Darren, her religious beliefs are enough for you to overlook her support of the TSA, wire tapping, unconstitutional search and seizure, and all the other provisions of the PATRIOT Act that have been eroding our freedoms for the last 10 years? She has repeatedly supported the PATRIOT Act and all the associated removal of personal liberty. Government is not about religion, the place of the President is not to put their religious beliefs on the people but to get out of the way of the people practicing their personal religous beliefs. Our Founding Fathers did not intend for any political leader to force their religious views on the people, they expected them to act morally and stay out of the way of people’s personal religous beliefs. A vote for Michele Bachmann is a vote against your personal freedom.
Remember the freedoms you give up when a President you support is in office are still gone when the next guy takes office (and you just may not agree with him).
Well Kathy you got one thing right,and thats crony capitolism. how ironic a republican preaching ideaology and getting the facts straight.The total fantasy of ayn rand is not a ideaology? The so called debt crises is the same old republican strategy of disaster capitalism. And the only ones in dire straights are the working poor and the shrinking middle class. The koch brothers and his billionare cronies and the top 1% have never had it so good. Yea its thse darn disabled, the elderly, and the poor throwing us into debt.To darren the so called entitlements like like ss are not part of the debt.We paid into it like insurance. And the cap is 106,000$ raise that, problem solved.Bottom line,politicians are paid off on both sides We need to stop playing into thier strategy of blaming each other, The working class has alot more in common on both sides, stay well informed, ignorance is our worst enemy.
Michelle Bachman and Tim Pawlenty along with the rest of the republicans currently in office are simply spokesmodels for the multinational corporations that are feeding all of our jobs to the communist nations. There is no need to even have people in their positions, just put in a kiosk and let their puppeteers do the voting themselves. The ultra greedy who would give the jobs of their countrymen to communists to save a buck dance them around like marionettes. My wife recommends they give up THEIR healthcare, THEIR social security, and THEIR public retirment plan.
Everyone believes in something. Romney and Huntsman are Mormon, Gingrich is Catholic, Paul is atheist I believe, Bachmann and Santorum are Christian. Currently we have a group of secular humanists in power forcing America’s children to worship globalism, Mother Earth on Earth Day, special rights for Muslims (but absolutely none for Christians) and the LGBT agenda. There is no separation of church and state here! Do you hear anyone yelling about it? All I hear is crickets….How about those parents who absolutely do not want their children indoctrinated with this garbage in public school but who can’t afford to send them to private school? Whatever happened to school being a place where reading, writing and arithmetic are taught and families teach their own children about sex and religion?!? It’s not the state’s place! God (the one and only true God) has zero tolerance for idol worship and perversion. The United States was founded on Judeo Christian ideology and documents; it is our heritage and tradition. Our laws and freedoms are based on the existence of God and theTen Commandments. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum would return things back to normal; where government minded its own business. Scary, huh. One of the primary reasons we’re in the mess we’re in is because of generations of people who attended public schools and were forcefed the poison of left wing propaganda from k-12. My personal favorite coming from my daughter was, “If you spank me, I’ll call the police.” You can observe the fruit of that now in the Occupy movement – children that were never disciplined. We must get back to the basics that made this nation great; loving and obeying God.
@ scoob – Ron Paul an atheist? what? he’s a pro-life Christian who is the only guy out there really running that doesn’t have establishment support – he supports liberty and personal freedom! …the media is only showing people what they want you see…I agree with you about the government looking down on Christians, I can agree on the fact that the OWS movement is a joke of spoiled kids wanting something for nothing – gee you mean Obama lied about me not having to work anymore and my getting a free car and house if I vote for him! what?!?! .- but Ron Paul being Atheist????? what? -sadly sir you are not informed about him, and you should look in to his beliefs to see what is real and not what the establishment media says about this man. After all his supporters started the tea party before the ‘coch’ brothers stole it. I don’t know if you will also notice that anyone else running when they want the tea party vote they start by agreeing with Ron Pauls positions – even if they won’t let him speak too much in the debates and shut him out of the CPAC (who he won the last two years in a row- he wasn’t invited this year.)