TPM2012

Michele Bachmann: Taxpayers Should Keep ‘Every Dollar’ They Earn

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

Former IRS lawyer Michele Bachmann has an interesting approach to taxation: she thinks Americans should get to keep “every dollar” they earn, though she says the government needs to get money somehow.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked Bachmann about a question at a previous Republican debate on how much of every dollar taxpayers should get to keep. Bachmann said that she talked to the young man who asked the question at the last debate.

“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 earned,’” Bachmann said. “That’s your money, that’s not the government’s money, that’s the whole point.”

Bachmann continued:

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 get money back to the government so 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.

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