Liberal Democracy

Liberal Democracy
The Free State

Monday, July 18, 2011

CBS News: The Early Show- Rebecca Jarvis- Interviewing U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann: 'I Cannot Vote To Raise The Debt Ceiling'

Source:CBS News- U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (Republican, Minnesota) on CBS's The Early Show.

"Rebecca Jarvis talks to Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann about the jobs, the economy and raising the debt ceiling.

Add Rep. Michelle Bachmann who's running for President in case you missed the memo, statement to the clueless list and to the list of reasons why she won't be President of the United States. Every time I hear her speak, I question whether she's qualified." 

From CBS News 

To first talk about what Representative Mchele Bachmann was saying about the budget deficit and national debt being President Barack Obama's: the deficit was already over a trillion-dollars the day President Obama took office two years ago. And the national debt was already over 11 trillion-dollars. He inherited a huge deficit and debt from former President George W. Bush. So unless the United States of America wasn't created until January 2009, it's not credible to say that the deficit and debt are the Obama deficits and debt. 

I'm not talking about legal qualifications here, but Representative Michele Bachmann's judgement. It's a good thing for Minnesota that she's not running for Senate in 2012, but I don't have to make that call which is good for me, because if she did run for Senate next year, she would probably get the Republican nomination for Senate and there are enough ignorant people in Minnesota unfortunately that she would run a strong race in Minnesota as far a getting support. 

Representative Bachmann also represents another reason why U.S. Reps. don't generally do very well when running for President and rarely even get much attention and support, because most of the 435 Representatives, except for some committee leaders and members of leadership, have never even ran statewide let alone been elected statewide, let alone run for national office, they are accustomed to running in a very partisan House districts. And not accustomed to speaking to a broader audience unlike senators, governors, President's and Vice President's have to do in order to get elected and reelected. 

One of the reasons why Reps. get reelected overwhelmingly and why there are so few competitive House races, because they are accustomed to be speaking to people that they basically know will vote for them, instead of speaking to Independents who don't know who'll they vote for and in a lot of cases don't make that decision until Election Day. 

Also Reps. generally lack executive and foreign policy experience two things that President's tend to have before they become President. So what you have with Michele Bachmann is someone who consistently speaks about issues she doesn't understand and doesn't have much experience dealing with. Which unfortunately can be said about a lot of the 435 Representatives in Congress.

As far as the debt ceiling issue goes: everyone in the debt ceiling negotiations all of the Democrats and Republicans, understands that America can't afford to default on our debt, one of the reasons is because of the size of it 14T$ over 90% of our GDP. Our weak economy simply can't afford it right now, we can't afford a worthless dollar. Even House Leader Eric Cantor who's said some strange things recently understands this. 

Which is just one reason why Representative Bachmann is not part of these negotiations, is just a matter of how we do it. A clean debt ceiling without budget cuts and tax hikes. A strict debt ceiling with budget cuts or a more broader debt ceiling package with both steep budget cuts and tax hikes on people who can afford it and closing tax loopholes, that I'm in favor of.