Bachmann spoke to a group of about 200 Spartanburg Republicans on Saturday evening. She was in Columbia earlier in the day and had to cancel a Friday visit with Rock Hill Republicans due to a late-night vote in the House.The most shocking thing in all that is the part where she says she is a former federal tax lawyer!“We are looking at a time of bubbles,” Bachmann said, referring to the housing and tech bubbles. She said that Americans are witnessing a “government bubble.”
“If Obama is allowed to continue what I call his ‘reign of error’ for another second term, we will be at $21 trillion in debt,” she said. “We are talking Greece territory in the greatest country in the world. We are talking Greece.”
She added, “When you add it all up — I’m a former federal tax lawyer — when you add up the tax burden on today’s kids — and I believe this is a low estimate — they are looking at in their peak years, at having 70 percent of their income to pay their tax bill.”
That’s a claim that Bachmann made at CPAC earlier this month when she claimed an even higher number — 75 percent, and according to the Washington Post, it simply isn’t true.
“The bottom line, when you ‘get out your calculator’ and add all this up: total taxes of about 25 percent, rather than the 75 percent in Bachmann’s telling,” wrote the Washington Post, which used tax experts to assist in its calculations of federal, state and local taxes. “We presented this math to Bachmann’s spokesman and are still waiting for a response.”
Bachmann blasted entitlement spending and urged reform in Social Security. “The problem is our health care welfare spending which is out of control,” she said. “The good news is we can solve this problem. It needs to be a market based approach.”
She offered up a somewhat non-traditional solution: “We need to simply tell people the facts, like Glenn Beck, with that chalkboard, that man can explain anything. I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this.”
She also said that the rich pay the most in taxes. “Don’t let people tell you that those dirty rich people don’t pay their taxes: The top 1 percent pay 40 percentof all income taxes, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, the top 10 percent pay 80 percent,” she said. “So we need a radically new system.”All this talk about bubbles is sort of funny in light of Chris Matthews' recent silly outburst that Bachman is a "balloon-head" and Beck's subsequent rousing defense of her.In addition to the government bubble and the business bubble, Bachmann spoke of the education bubble, decrying $44 billion in Pell grants for low-income students.
She also talked about the “family bubble.”
“The family is on a bubble right now. The rate of cohabitating couples in one year increased 13 percent,” she said. “The family is the ultimate first form and first unit in government and society.”
She added, “The bureaucrats now hate our values; there’s a war on marriage, a war on family, a war on fertility all while funding and promoting abortion.”
Bachmann continued, “We don’t need political correctness because most fundamentally I believe the building block of the family is what the government needs to do right now and support two-parent families as the foundation of our economic and social policy.”
She said for that reason, social issues need to be a priority. “We can’t put the so called social issues on the back burner while we are solving our economic challenges because the family is the solution to those challenges.”
“So it is our time and it’s about 2012 and I’m in, and so I ask you tonight, are you in for 2012?”
Let's hope Bachman really is all in for 2012 and plans to run. The whole country needs to hear her message.