There she goes again....
On Fox News Sunday Michele Bachmann was asked by host Chris Wallace about reports that she and her husband had accepted government aid for businesses that they own. Confronted with the facts, Bachmann prevaricated, spun, and even outright lied in an attempt to mislead viewers. Nothing new there -- for Bachmann or Fox News. What is surprising is that Wallace and some other members of the mainstream media have even seen fit to call her on her deceptions.
These questions were prompted by a LA Times article published Sunday morning that probed govenment aid given to Bachmann and her husband.
The Minnesota Republican and her family have benefited personally from government aid, an examination of her record and finances shows. A family farm in Wisconsin, in which the congresswoman is a partner, received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies. Bachmann said in December that the subsidies went to her in-laws and she never received "one penny" from the farm, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. However, in financial disclosure forms, she reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.
Yet despite her broadsides against "socialized medicine," Bachmann's husband, Marcus, applied for public funds for his counseling clinic, Bachmann & Associates. Since 2006, he has received nearly $30,000, according to Minnesota state records. The bulk of the money — $24,041 — came in the form of grants from the state Department of Human Services to train staff how to deal with clients suffering from chemical dependency and mental illness. That program was financed in part by the federal government.
Enter Chris Wallace, who on
Fox News Sunday asked Bachmann about the facts revealed in this article:
WALLACE: The Los Angeles Times has a story out today that says for all your talk of being a fiscal hawk, that, in fact, you have gone after federal and government -- excuse me, state government money over the years, both personally and professionally.
A counseling clinic -- excuse me -- run by your husband got almost $30,000 in state federal funds. A farm, in which you are a partner, got almost $260,000 in federal subsidies.
Question -- that's a fiscal hawk?
BACHMANN: Well, let's go through them. First of all, the money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees. The clinic did not get the money. And my husband and I did not get the money either. That's mental health training money that went to employees.
Number two, regarding the farm, the farm is my father-in-law's farm. It's not my husband and my farm. It's my father-in-law's farm. And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm.
All of which has been known by local bloggers in Minnesota for years now, but has only recently percolated up into the mainstream. Abe Sauer, blogging at
The Awl, writes:
In 2007, Karl Bremer broke the story about how even when Bachmann was voting her public anti-government handout values, she was collecting more than $47,000 in federal farm subsidies on "a 949-acre Wisconsin farming operation in which Bachmann owns up to a quarter-million-dollars interest." Bremer also revealed that "the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership has collected as much as $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since the partnership was established in 2001." Bremer has continued to chase this subsidies story, noting that in 2011, Bachmann’s father-in-law Paul is still registered as agent and general partner for the family farm. Paul Bachmann died in 2009.
(Bremer also contends that Rolling Stone's comment on his research about Bachmann's farm subsidies is wrong and that Bachmann, not just her father-in-law, financially benefitted as well.)
And indeed, the otherwise fastidious Matt Taibbi did miss the agricultural subsidy angle in his recent Rolling Stone article about Bachmann by merely noting:
Michele took a job as a tax attorney collecting for the IRS and spent four years sucking on the tit of the Internal Revenue Service, which makes her Tea Party-leader hypocrisy quotient about average. (At least she didn't collect more than $250,000 in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2006 — that was her father-in-law.)
About this Taibbi is wrong -- Bachmann herself did collect on these farm subsidies.