Tag Archives: GOP Florida Presidential Debate

It belongs to him

In the "can't tell if troll category" here is Michelle Bachmann on taxation:

KELLY: Thanks, Bret.

Congresswoman Bachmann, after the last debate, a young member of the California Tea Party said he didn’t feel he had had his question fully answered. And it’s a question that received the most votes on Google and YouTube on the list, as well. The answer his question is a number. And the question was, quote, “Out of every dollar I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?”

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN.: And after the debate, I talked to that young man, and I said I wish I could have answered that question, because I want to tell you what my answer is: I think you earned every dollar. You should get to keep every dollar that you earn. That’s your money; that’s not the government’s money.

(APPLAUSE)

That’s the whole point. Barack Obama seems to think that when we earn money, it belongs to him and we’re lucky just to keep a little bit of it. I don’t think that at all. I think when people make money, it’s their money.

Obviously, we have to give money back to the government so that we can run the government, but we have to have a completely different mindset. And that mindset is, the American people are the genius of this economy. It certainly isn’t government that’s the genius. And that’s the two views.

President Obama has embraced a view of government-directed temporary fixes and gimmicks. They don’t work. He’s destroyed the economy. What does work is private solutions that are permanent in the private sector. That gives certainty; that will grow our economy.

(APPLAUSE)

This is idiocy of the highest order–both question and answer.  For the idiocy of the question, listen to Elizabeth Warren.  Concerning Bachmann here, three obvious–and I think disqualifying for the job of Congressional janitor–logical problems.  (1) Obama doesn't think anything like what she alleges and (2) she thinks there ought to be taxation but people should keep all of the money they earn; (3) the red herring at the end urging that the private sector ought to fix the economy.

Sadly, over at TPM, a site I can't figure out, here is the headline: "Michelle Bachmann: Taxpayers Ought to Keep Every Dollar They Earn."  She does not actually put the matter in this obviously self-contradictory way ("taxpayers should not be taxpayers").  But she does say something idiotic.  And the most idiotic thing I think is the last bit about how doing nothing about the economy is what ought to be done.  Yet, sadly again, in most of the stories I surveyed this morning about this quote (googling the quote that is), the end bit was cut off. 

My own view is that the straw manner (such as Bachmann obviously is) deserves no charity; but that I'm going to predict is what people will object to about this story–"Bachmann misquoted!"  This misquote will justify the iron man in their mind.  And this is sad, I think.