Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen

[Joanne98]

By Yasha Levine

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.


Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits). “If she has an interest in a farm getting federal subsidy payments, she is benefiting from them,” Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, told Gannett News Service in 2007, when the subsidies to Bachmann were first publicly disclosed.


Continued>>>>
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221

[Zoeisright]

1. I so hope her idiot constituents ignore the census and her seat is removed.

That would be just incredible justice.

[applegrove]

2. Hypocrite! Glad she has been shown to be that.

[niyad]

3. k and r

[Dr.Phool]

4. LOL! Nobody could have foreseen.

Michelle Bachmann going on welfare!

I guess a $170k congressional salary just doesn't go as far as it used to.

[ck4829]

5. Kick

[mbperrin]

6. Blatant money grubbing hypocrite! Who'da thunk?

I thought she only grubbed from lobbyists! Hypocrite? Sure, no surprise there.

Have I posted anywhere today that I really despise her?

[butterfly77]

7. It isn't called welfare when they do it...

and what they get compared to most people is on a larger and greater scale,they are living off of the government.

They make all of the laws so that it benefits them and their families and make it hard for others to make a living.

One of their suggestions to Obama for creating jobs was cut the minimum wage. These people are crazy as hell...

[Robbie88]

8. Hahahahaha BUSTED!

I wonder how the Tea Party folks will react to the news that there appears to be a bit of a distance between what their ringleader "advocates" and actually practices. I'm sure they'll come up with some excuse to allow themselves to continue living their lives in their right-wing fantasy land.

[debbierlus]

9. She is just gross.