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Jul. 13th, 2011 05:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disneydream06Bachmann is a Teabagger/AntiTax darling, but there's one little problem with that.......
Does Anyone Care That Bachmann Was a Tax Collector?
by Robin M.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has made it clear that she is all about ending “wasteful government spending” and keeping taxes drastically low. To boost her claims of expertise, she often touts her experience as a former tax attorney.
Apparently, it took a while for people to learn that her experience was actually working FOR the IRS, not against it. Bachmann wasn’t an advocate for the “common man,” she was actually a federal tax collector.
The Atlantic issued an in depth look at Bachmann’s “tax attorney” background, and it may not be one her Tea Party followers will be as happy to embrace.
[Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks] said he didn’t think tea party activists would be troubled by Bachmann’s work for the IRS. The tax code itself is the problem, he said. But some of her rivals might be tempted to make her former job an issue.
“If you’re Tim Pawlenty or Newt Gingrich, you’re going to grab this and say, “Look at this, she’s a tax collector,’ ”Brandon said.
The founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, Bachmann is a central figure in a national insurgency that decries big government and demands lower taxes. Her campaign and congressional biographies make no mention of her handling of tax collection cases from 1988 to 1993 for the IRS.
“Rather than taking money from the hands of the middle class to pay for a large, overbearing federal government, I believe in letting hard-working taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” she says on her congressional website. “In my work as a former federal tax attorney, I saw firsthand that our nation’s tax laws are hard to understand and undermine the country’s prosperity by imposing needlessly harsh penalties on work, savings, and investments.”
She saw them first hand as she earned her living enforcing those same laws she now rallies again.
As Think Progress notes, she hasn’t been kind to the the former federal agency that helped her afford to raise her family. “During an interview with the conservative publication Newsmax, Bachmann derided the IRS as ‘the most heartless organization that anyone knows of.’ At other times, she has called the IRS a ‘new social welfare agency,’ that will have ‘the right to confiscate our tax refunds.’”
But will any of this actually hurt Bachmann with her base? She is now officially the leader in Iowa polling, finally pulling ahead of Mitt Romney by 4 points at 25 to 21 — just inside the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error.
If this talking point has any traction, expect third place finisher Tim Pawlenty to bring it out soon in his new one on one battle with his fellow Minnesotan.
Does Anyone Care That Bachmann Was a Tax Collector?
by Robin M.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has made it clear that she is all about ending “wasteful government spending” and keeping taxes drastically low. To boost her claims of expertise, she often touts her experience as a former tax attorney.
Apparently, it took a while for people to learn that her experience was actually working FOR the IRS, not against it. Bachmann wasn’t an advocate for the “common man,” she was actually a federal tax collector.
The Atlantic issued an in depth look at Bachmann’s “tax attorney” background, and it may not be one her Tea Party followers will be as happy to embrace.
[Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks] said he didn’t think tea party activists would be troubled by Bachmann’s work for the IRS. The tax code itself is the problem, he said. But some of her rivals might be tempted to make her former job an issue.
“If you’re Tim Pawlenty or Newt Gingrich, you’re going to grab this and say, “Look at this, she’s a tax collector,’ ”Brandon said.
The founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, Bachmann is a central figure in a national insurgency that decries big government and demands lower taxes. Her campaign and congressional biographies make no mention of her handling of tax collection cases from 1988 to 1993 for the IRS.
“Rather than taking money from the hands of the middle class to pay for a large, overbearing federal government, I believe in letting hard-working taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” she says on her congressional website. “In my work as a former federal tax attorney, I saw firsthand that our nation’s tax laws are hard to understand and undermine the country’s prosperity by imposing needlessly harsh penalties on work, savings, and investments.”
She saw them first hand as she earned her living enforcing those same laws she now rallies again.
As Think Progress notes, she hasn’t been kind to the the former federal agency that helped her afford to raise her family. “During an interview with the conservative publication Newsmax, Bachmann derided the IRS as ‘the most heartless organization that anyone knows of.’ At other times, she has called the IRS a ‘new social welfare agency,’ that will have ‘the right to confiscate our tax refunds.’”
But will any of this actually hurt Bachmann with her base? She is now officially the leader in Iowa polling, finally pulling ahead of Mitt Romney by 4 points at 25 to 21 — just inside the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error.
If this talking point has any traction, expect third place finisher Tim Pawlenty to bring it out soon in his new one on one battle with his fellow Minnesotan.
