Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann tells a crowd gathered outside of a boxing ring in Duluth that you can't believe the stories about Tea Party people spitting and hurling the "N-word" at black Democratic Congressional members because no one has it on video. Since she made her statement on Sunday, video tape evidence has appeared in the internet.
Warning: our video does have an ad at the beginning. However, gas to and from Duluth, MN isn't cheap and we have to fund ourselves somehow! Thank you to Craig Stellmacher for driving up to shoot the video!
Transcript after the jump and more video of Bachmann in a boxing ring.
Full video of speech
Transcript of the first 14 minutes. The part that's in the first video is boxed.
I’m speaking inside a boxing ring. I’m so excited.
This feels like being in the well of the House of Representatives. This is the center of action. And we fight just as hard down there. I’m so excited. Are you happy to be here?
There’s someone walking out on the sidewalk right now. He’s holding a sign. You may have seen him. It says “tea party also known as the KKK” So let me see a show of hands. How many people here are part of the KKK? Oh, somebody better go tell that guy out there. He’s got it wrong! Can’t possibly be.
You’ve probably heard that all this week how the Democrats were talking about the tea party that was in Washington DC over the weekend. Over 30,000 freedom loving Americans came to the United States capitol on Saturday. With less than 48 hours notice some people drove over 20 hours to be able to come out to Washington to do whatever they could to get the attention of Nancy Pelosi, of Harry Reid, of Barack Obama. And they did everything they could and they were shut out by the Democrats. And as a matter of fact they were smeared by the Democrats this week.
You may have heard that. Where they were… where Democrats said that they were called the “N” word which of course would be wrong and inappropriate. But no one has any record of it. No witness saw it. It’s not on camera. It’s not on audio. They said that they were spat upon. No one saw it. I walked right through the gauntlet of where they were walking through. There were people for the health care bill…very few. Most were against. No one saw it. There’s a 10 thousand dollar reward right now for anyone who can either produce a witness or a video or an audio. Don’t you think we would have seen an audio or a video by now if there was something out there. When I was out there no member of congress could be out there without having a camera in their face or a tape recorder or in their face. And I Just think we need to call this for what it is. They want to say that you are the ones that are wrong because you don’t love and appreciate the government takeover of health care. What do you think about that?
That’s right. I would agree with you. And so we’re going to talk about that and I am here to tell you a little bit about where we’re at right now in the country, but also to congratulate you. Congratulate you because you’re saying 35 years of Jim Oberstar is enough for northeastern Minnesota.
I was extremely disappointed this last week. He had said that he would be a part of what was called the “Stupak 12”. Any of you hear about the Stupak 12? 12 pro-life Democrats who said they would refuse to vote for the Obamacare because it is the greatest expansion of abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade back in the early 70s. Now that is saying something. The greatest expansion of abortion since Roe versus Wade. Jim Oberstar promised that he would not vote for the bill if it contained federal funding of abortion. Well, on Sunday afternoon, the so-called pro-life Democrats caved and Jim Oberstar caved even before the whole Stupak 12 caved. He caved early on and he was out lobbying other pro-life Democrats on the floor. Now think of this. On Sunday, on the Sabbath, that’s when speaker Pelosi decided we had to have the vote. During lent, on the Sabbath, pro-life Democrats were being forced to knuckle under and violate their moral conscious, but also the moral conscious of every American in the United States because now for the first time in the history of the United States all Americans will be forced to have to pay for Federal funding of abortion.
This is what Jim Oberstar voted for. Now he’s been quoted in the papers as saying “that’s not true, I didn’t vote for federal funding of abortion.” I am here today in Duluth to tell you yes he did. Yes he did. There is no such thing anymore as a pro-life Democrat. That’s a myth that’s out there. If there was ever a time when you would use your pro-life credentials, it would be on this vote. But when it came to the clutch, Jim Oberstar and the other so called pro-life Democrats, who aren’t pro-life Democrats, when it came to the clutch they chose speaker Pelosi over their commitment to the pro-life movement. And you need to know that. You need to know that information going forward. Because this vote changes our country forever. It changes us forever. And I want to give you just a little bit of background.
First I want to give you just a little bit of positive news. Overwhelmingly the American people were on the side of life and on the side of freedom and on the side of prosperity and on the side of growth. 60%, almost 60% of Americans. That shows we truly are a center-right country. Even if you look, here’s another piece of positive news, even in the state of California, in Nancy Pelosi’s own district, when they had the elections last year, when they had the elections and they had ah ah ah an amendment on the ballot that called for having same sex marriage, even in Speaker Pelosi’s district the vote totals were going ah…and also tax increases…there was a measure on increasing taxes in California…even in Speaker Pelosi’s district that measure didn’t go through. So what that tells you is that the American people are on the side of saying we’re taxed enough already. Does anyone agree with that?
That’s why things are changing. In the state of Virginia you saw in 2008 the Presidential election Barack Obama won with almost 10 percent of the vote in the state of Virginia . Now Bob McDonald, the Republican, won the Governorship in the state of Virginia overwhelmingly by 13 points. That’s a 23 point shift in the voters. Then take a look at New Jersey. New Jersey, which is not a Republican state. New Jersey put Chris Christie a Republican Governor in place of Jon Corzine. No one thought that was going to happen. And then after Christmas, after Harry Reid had a vote on health care on Christmas Eve, when Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar signed away your right to freedom and health care and voted for this job-killing government takeover of health care, along came the people of Massachusetts in the mother of all ironies, Ted Kennedy’s seat, who was the father of this government takeover of health care, what did the people of Massachusetts say, are you kidding me, Scott Brown! And that gave us 41 votes in the Senate for Republicans which everyone thought health care was dead at that point and the President wouldn’t have a chance. But the one thing we’ve learned, is that the President doesn’t give up easy. And we’re not going to give up easy either. Are we? We are not giving up either. Because I am here to tell you that when the bill passed around the midnight hour on Sunday evening, I turned to our leader on the floor and I said “this is it, we have to repeal this bill”. And we have to file a discharge petition on the floor which requires 218 signatures, cause we have to get rid of this bill. And he said “go for it”. And so the very next morning I was the first one on the floor of the House of Representatives and I dropped a bill to repeal Obamacare, the very first bill introduced on Monday was my bill to repeal Obamacare.
And that’s just what we’re going to do. And whoever you send as your candidate to run against Jim Oberstar this fall, if your candidate runs on repealing Obamacare, your candidate will win this fall.
I have no doubt. Because people in Duluth are no different than people anywhere else in the United States. They want the American dream. Don’t you? You want the American dream for your kids. You want your children to have a better way of life then you had. Right? You had it, but you had today a better way of life than your parents, don’t you? Your parents sacrificed for you. They did whatever they could so that you could go to school. So you could go to college if you wanted to. So that you could own a car. You could own a house. They would do whatever they could. And we want that for our kids too. But now we’re looking at a future that is so different, it will be unlike that anything we knew , that our grandparents, that our parents knew. And I want to give you just a little bit of background, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Let me give you the positive first. We don’t even have to wait one quarter for job growth. We can have job growth next quarter and this is how we can do it. Do you know President Obama increased spending last year in the United States when the economy was tanking. He increased the federal spending 64%. This is unbelieveable. In one year’s time, the 700 billion dollar bank bailout, the trillion dollar stimulus spending, he increased some of the budgets of Washington DC by over 80 percent in some of these departments. That’s unbelieveable. It is so irresponsible, you can’t do that. What we would do is cut out all of the increases that President Obama has put in place in spending. It’s like he’s a kid in a candy store right now. What does he care, it’s your money? What does he care? He’s sticking the bill to you. He’s sticking the bill to your kids. Is that what you want? No!
We can’t afford this guy. So we cut back on that spending. Do you know that United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world? The highest business tax rate in the world. The highest job creation tax rate in the world? There’s a reason why we’re not seeing job growth in United States. It’s because we have a 34 percent tax rate and then you join that with a high job creation rate that we have here in the state of Minnesota, well no wonder somebody is not going to come here to stop jobs. If you have to spend over 40 percent, just on the straight job creation tax, let alone your property tax and other taxes are you going to come here to Minnesota to open your new business. No, you’re not going to do it. So what we should do is take that job creation tax, the corporate tax, take it from 34% , cut it down to 9%. It would be about the lowest in the industrialized world and say “hey, open for business. Come here”. (inaudible) We’ve got smart people, come here.
You’ve got smart people. You’ve got beauty, you’ve got hard working people…who wouldn’t want to come to Duluth. It’s a beautiful place. Let’s make it the go-to spot. Duluth, Minnesota. This area. The iron range, this was the center for building the American dream. And what was that? The basic building block of this country came out of this area. Iron ore. Which fueled US steel. Which fueled not only the dramatic growth of this nation, but also the world. We were the steel hub in the world. And it came out of here in Duluth, Minnesota.