Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) (23 page)

Obamacare was a victory for left-wing ideologues, and it was also a victory for governmental gangsters. As soon as the bill was enacted, the administration started issuing waivers for the provisions of the bill; that is, it began opening up loopholes that would, for example, allow an insurance plan to spend more on administrative overhead than the new law allowed. In other words, the Obama administration was admitting what critics had been saying all along—that the bill was unworkable and unaffordable. And yet it was making this admission only to a select few. So who got these waivers? Well, it helped if you were a well-connected labor union or a well-heeled donor or the client of a wired-in lobbyist. Within a year of Obamacare's passage, the number of waivers granted had risen to over a thousand; it was becoming embarrassing to Democrats. So the administration announced that it would no longer be granting waivers; the dubious process was making Obamacare look bad. Yet conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who had been tracking the story since the beginning, wasn't buying that new spin. She wrote in June 2011, “Expect a resurrection of the waivers in some other name or form. . . . I guarantee you: Unions, Democrat lobbying groups, and liberal execs will find a way to get their exemptions—and the White House will find a way to distribute their crony waivers by another name.” Is Malkin a cynic? No, she is prescient. She is simply onto the reality of gangster government.

If Washington, D.C., was hopelessly in the grip of liberal gangsters, I could see that there was only one recourse—to win the next election. Indeed, the 2010 midterm elections were coming, and so the battle lines had to be drawn. In that year, I crisscrossed the country, speaking up for like-minded candidates. I would sum up the Tea Party movement as “TEA.” That is, Taxed Enough Already.

Yet in fact there was much more to talk about. We Republicans, reinforced by the Tea Party and everyone else who could see that Obama-style liberalism was a disaster, spoke strongly on many crucial matters. We were against Obamacare and the bureaucratic takeover of our health-care system. We were against bailing out Wall Street. (Not every Republican but, by now, most.) We were
against the “stimulus”—which actually, of course, was a destimulus. We were against
the government running the auto industry. We were against cap-and-trade's strange mix of repression and profiteering. We were against green energy fantasies.

That's a lot of “against.” So what were we
for
? What constituted our positive, twenty-first-century conservative vision of limited government? We were for lower taxes. We were for individuals making their own health-care decisions. We were for
the freedom to reduce unemployment by not taxing investment money away from job-creating businesspeople. We were
for
a constitutional vision of personal liberty. We were for a strong America, confident in its essential values. We were for standing up for our treasured allies. In other words, we needed GOP—Government Of the People. The American people are always the solution.

On July 15, 2010, I filed the paperwork to establish the Tea Party Caucus as a formal component of Congress. As I said at the time:

 

The American people are speaking out loud and clear. They have had enough of the spending, the bureaucracy, and the government knows best mentality running rampant today throughout the halls of Congress. This caucus will espouse the timeless principles of our founding, principles that all Members of Congress have sworn to uphold. The American people are doing their part and making their voices heard and this caucus will prove that there are some here in Washington willing to listen.

The Democrats and their media allies mocked Republicans and Tea Partiers. They painted us as toothless hillbillies coming down from the hills, wearing red-white-and-blue bib overalls. But I could see that despite these attacks—and maybe, in fact, because of these attacks—we were winning. Why? Because the more Obama and the Main Stream Media attacked us, the more ordinary voters could see that we were really something different, that we were boldly proclaiming an important new message. If we had been just the same business-as-usual, go-along-get-along Republicans, liberals would have left us alone, maybe even thrown us some crumbs off the table. But because we were fresh and different, bringing vital new energy to the political scene, we were a genuine threat.

And at the same time, what were the Democrats offering? Here's a partial list of policies that needed to be unmasked: Unbridled spending. Unsustainable debt. Undermined currency. Unfundable liabilities. Unfathomable taxation. Unrestrained regulation. Underwater mortgages. Unleashed energy inflation. Unguarded borders. Unsettled families. Unending unemployment and underemployment. And unknown, unprecedented, and seemingly unstoppable stealth appropriations. Taken together, all those “uns” added up to the undoing of the Democrats' grip on the country.

Of course, not everything in 2009–2010 was Obamacare and Tea Party. As the proud servant of the people of the 6th congressional district of Minnesota, I had a duty to help constituents. Much of the work of a member of Congress might be considered routine, but it is still important. When people lose their passport just before a foreign trip or can't get a Social Security check or can't get an answer to a crucial question—our office was there to help. It would be nice, of course, if the federal bureaucracy could respond in a timely manner, but if a phone call from me or my staff could nudge things along, we were glad to do it.

One such example was the case of Ronald Kane of Woodbury, Minnesota. Ron served in the army during the Vietnam War, and yet he never received proper honor for his extraordinary heroism. Back on July 11, 1969, he and his unit were patrolling in the A Shau Valley when they were ambushed by the enemy; Ron, showing no fear for his own safety, rallied his men to repulse the attack, then led them to safety. At the time, he was told he would receive a medal for his heroism, and he believed it would all be taken care of. Like so many returning veterans, he had a civilian life to pick up again; he assumed that his medal would eventually be sent to him. Well, the decades piled up, and finally, in 2002, he realized that his medal had never arrived. So he contacted the Pentagon and waited. And waited. At one point, Ron even drove to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis to see if he could track down his military records—all, once again, to no avail. He also contacted other federal officials and received no help. Finally, in 2007, he contacted my office, and we were able to help him receive what he had earned nearly four decades earlier—a Silver Star. I felt privileged to speak at an award ceremony for Ron on Memorial Day 2010, as he finally received his due, forty years later, from a grateful nation. His whole family was with him, as well as admiring neighbors, but Ron remained modest about his heroism: “I just did it to save my men.” True heroes are always like that—modest, even as their heroism is recalled. They simply did what they needed to do. As for the rest of us, it's our duty to honor them appropriately.

Also in 2010, I faced my own biennial election. I had plenty of friends but also foes. Given my relatively close call in 2008, the national Democrats thought that this time maybe they could defeat me. My opponent was a community activist, Democratic Party official, and state senator; I knew she would have plenty of money. So I did what I have always done: I worked hard. I raised more money than any member of Congress in the history of the institution—although I might note that my average donation was just forty-five dollars; I will never be the candidate of the limousines, in either party. In the end, I won the election by thirteen points.

On election night 2010, I appeared again on MSNBC's
Hardball
. Once again Matthews was in Washington, while I was in Minnesota—only this time I wasn't in a studio, but amid an election-night party of friends and supporters at the Sheraton Hotel in Bloomington, which served as the Republican Party headquarters that victorious night. But some things never change: Matthews once again had an agenda. Noting that Republicans had taken back the majority in the House, as well as the new investigative authority that comes with it, Matthews led off by asking, “Will you use the subpoena power to investigate the Democratic members of Congress for un-American activities?” So I answered—struggling to hear his questions over an ecstatic crowd—that my goal was to make sure that taxes didn't go up. Matthews asked the “anti-American” question again, and in my response I reminded Matthews that the Bush tax cuts were scheduled to expire less than two months in the future, on December 31, 2010; such an expiration, I warned, would mean a “dramatic increase in taxes,” just what the economy did not need. That was my agenda, and so, as always, I was declaring it firmly and staying true to it.

So then Matthews said, “Congresswoman Bachmann, are you hypnotized tonight? Has someone hypnotized you? Because no matter what I ask you, you give the same answer. Are you hypnotized? Has someone put you under a trance tonight? That you give me the same answer no matter what question I put to you?”
Actually,
people in that Bloomington ballroom—as well as TV viewers—may well have thought to themselves,
it's Matthews who seemed to be hypnotized, because when he didn't get the answer he wanted, he repeated the same question.
But, of course, Matthews was playing to his crowd, including those in the studio with him; I could hear his cohosts chortling. I said, “I think the American people are the ones that are finally speaking tonight. We're coming out of our trance.” And I added, “I think people are thrilled tonight. I imagine that thrill is probably maybe quite not so tingly on your leg anymore.”

On November 2, 2010, the American people began taking their country back. Republicans won control of the House, winning a total of sixty-three seats, the greatest gain for a party in a midterm election in more than seven decades.

I was at the tip of the spear in the 2010 elections. I might not be an insider's insider—I never wanted to be—but I tried to get things done on the larger national stage. I am a fighter because I believe I was sent to Washington to actively uphold the Constitution. I listen to people and communicate with them. That's how you build a movement, and then establish a governing coalition, and then change the country. Do what you promised people you would do.

One sad note: David Meyer, the husband of my lifelong friend Barbara, passed away on December 2, 2010. Married for thirty-two years, Mr. and Mrs. Meyer had enjoyed a great life together in northern California, raising two wonderful children. But then David was stricken with pancreatic cancer; he was a brave battler for two and a half years, but doctors could not save him. We visited several times during his struggle, and Barbara and I talked on the phone even more often than usual during that period, exchanging prayers and other words of encouragement.

When Barbara called me to say that David had only a few more hours to live, I left my office on Capitol Hill just as we were voting and jumped on an airplane and flew to San Francisco, to the airport nearest to where they lived. Agonizingly, my plane was late; when I finally landed at 11:00
P.M
., I called Barbara, who told me the sad news that David had passed away while I was in the air. David died at home, surrounded by family, true and faithful and good spirited to the end. Barbara suggested that I find a hotel room near the airport and get at least part of a night's sleep, but I wanted to be with her and her kids in their time of need. She would have done the exact same thing for me. So I drove the three and a half hours to be with Barbara, Christy, and Daniel, and to pray with them. I thought of Paul's epistle to the Thessalonians: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” And then Paul instructs us: “Comfort one another with these words.”

Later that same day, I had to get back on an airplane and fly back to Washington for more votes. Nine days later I flew out to Ukiah a second time, where I was privileged to deliver the eulogy for David. Barbara has always been and always will be a sister to me. I thank God for my family and for these dear lifelong friends.

Yet at the same time, I could see that I was being called to serve on a larger scale. I have thanked God many times for giving me the opportunity to serve on the national level. Now the work I had begun needed to be continued. The question of America's future was at stake, and I had the resolve to continue the fight to save it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Called to Serve: Seeking the Presidency

IN late 2010, friends and constituents began suggesting that I run for president. Folks credited me with playing a leading role in energizing the Republican vote in the 2010 midterm elections. They told me that I had a solid conservative record, that I was an articulate spokeswoman for all the key conservative beliefs, and that I had been right to oppose the 2008 bailouts initiated by Democrats and Republicans and continued by Democrats, as well as the big-spending foolishness perpetrated by President Obama. America needed that sort of conservative, they told me, the kind of leader who puts principle ahead of party. They also said that through my plain speaking I had helped bring disaffected swing voters over to the GOP. They also mentioned that I had an intriguing résumé. And so, they said, I should get into the race for the 2012 Republican nomination.

At first I dismissed the idea. I was happy in the House; I felt that I had a voice and a clear role to play.

But then I began to see that there was a lot more work to be done. The 2010 election had broken the power of the Obama presidency—but Obama was still president. The elections had brought Republican victory in the House but not in the Senate. The country was hurting, and the voters were watching; if the GOP were to slip into bad habits, it could be pitched out of power just as quickly as it had gained the majority. The real point of having power, I believed, was to follow the Constitution—that would make America a better place.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration was at it again. Earlier, I described the many components of liberal government—and of gangster government. I described the increased spending and the increased regulating—and even the tax cheating. I decried Obamacare and the administration's thuggish handling of the Chrysler bailout. I mentioned its handling of Fannie, Freddie, and Dodd-Frank. All of these represent the dysfunctional Beltway business-as-usual practices that shocked the conscience, and drained the wallet, of ordinary Americans.

Yet even after his policies were repudiated by the voters in 2010, the president was still working his will through the under-the-radar bureaucracy. And to me, two incidents proved to be the two last straws. The last straws, that is, convincing me that the absolute maximum effort was needed to stop Obama-style liberalism—and gangsterism—in its tracks.

The first straw came in February 2011. That's when I learned from Ernest Istook, a former Oklahoma congressman turned budget watcher at the Heritage Foundation, that the Obama administration had hidden $105 billion to begin implementation of Obamacare, $105,464,000,000, to be precise, in a series of postdated checks in funding to be paid out between 2011 and 2019.

Usually legislation to create a program such as Obamacare only
authorizes
the spending of funds; it takes separate legislation actually to appropriate—that is, spend—the money. But not this time. This time the liberals couldn't wait for the familiar workings of Congress; they wanted to start spending money right away—and with “the fierce urgency of now,” as Obama always said during the 2008 campaign.

President Obama knew the American people wouldn't like his bill, so he didn't want to take any chances that a 2010 election could mean the repudiation of Democratic majorities (which it did in the House), that is why he, Pelosi, and Reid prefunded Obamacare, but conveniently forgot to tell most everyone in Congress. Do a Google or even a Lexis/Nexis search on Obamacare funding—you won't find many articles, if any, on Obamacare and $105,464,000,000 in funding. Even by Washington's standards, that's a lot of money. Every member of Congress who voted for Obamacare should have to answer two questions for their constituents. First, did they read the bill before voting for it? And second, did they know they were voting to spend that $105,464,000,000?

And if they did, where were they getting the money from? The Democrats all prided themselves on the so-called “pay-go” rules, meaning they had to show they had a legitimate source to pay for their $105 billion in spending.

So the normally required sequence—first authorization, then appropriation—was bypassed; federal money, it turned out, was already being spent to set in place the fabled crown jewel of socialism. This is the federal government we're talking about, and so if Uncle Sam is already spending close to $4 trillion a year, despite taking in only about $2.2 trillion a year, Obama could simply borrow another $105 billion. Here's an example: Section 1311[a] of Obamacare allows the secretary of health and human services to provide $16 billion in grants to the states to start setting up “exchanges” for the sale of Obama-approved, and-mandated, health insurance. That is, $16 billion to
begin
setting up a federal program; that is, to hire the consultants, rent the office space, and hold the all-important retreats at swanky resorts. It's the good life in D.C., and the rest of us are paying for it. So we are reminded, once again, why Washington enjoys the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the nation. I know that I'm getting pretty deep in the weeds here, but the liberal big spenders have been deep in these weeds for decades—that's one reason that we're in financial bankruptcy. For Republicans to be effective in countering this big-government weed patch, tough talk won't get the job done. Instead, they are going to need, first, the ability to understand the nature of this expensive federal shrubbery, and second, of course, they are going to need the strength to mow it down.

Moreover, in this instance, we saw the recurrence of a baleful pattern: The feds began “giving” grants to the states to set up their own satellite programs—and only too late did the states wake up and realize that not only did they have a bad program on their hands, but they were spending more to run it than they were actually getting from the feds. That total of $105 billion, to put it in perspective, was enough to fund the entire operation of the state of Minnesota for three years or the state of Iowa for seventeen years.

So in regard to this stealth $105 billion, I was livid and thought the world should know what most members of Congress should know. When twelve-digit sums get spent with virutally no knowledge of those doing the voting, that's gangsterism on steroids. On March 6, 2011, I went on NBC's
Meet the Press
, holding up a sign reading “$105,464,000,000”; I explained, as best I could in a few moments, the outrageousness of this latest scam. So many outrages occur every day in Washington that to many members of Congress it seemed just too complicated, too much trouble to worry about. I thought,
Our team needed to fight over that $105 billion in nontransparent spending. Otherwise, what's to stop Obama from doing it again? For more? And what if Republicans had slipped in $105 billion into the largest piece of legislation to come along in a generation, and we had failed to disclose this material term to the Democrats? The Democrats would have gone ballistic, and rightly so. And the media would have gone equally ballistic.
But instead, our side just let it go.

The second straw came in May 2011. That's when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint against the Boeing Company aimed at stopping the opening of a new airplane plant that Boeing had built—at a cost of some $750 million—in South Carolina. The plant was built to expand production of Boeing's new 787 “Dreamliner” passenger jet, creating four thousand new jobs. Yet the NLRB, fired up by new Obama appointees, filed suit to stop the production, accusing Boeing of engaging in an “unfair labor practice” by opening a plant in right-to-work South Carolina as opposed to prounion Washington State. It was an unprecedented legal argument from the NLRB and threatened grave damage not only to Boeing but also to South Carolina. The Palmetto State's charismatic new governor, Nikki Haley, denounced the action: “This is a direct assault on everything we know America to be.” She was right. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the Labor Department, noted a further absurdity: the NLRB's saying that Boeing was taking assets away from Washington State. After all, Boeing was continuing to make 787s at a unionized plant in Everett; it was simply planning on building more 787s at the second plant in North Charleston. And because Boeing currently had backlogged orders of some 850 planes, both plants had many years of full-capacity production to look forward to. I asked myself:
What's the problem here? And why would the Obama administration, operating through the cat's paw of the NLRB, seek to shut down production and jobs? Is this the Obama economic plan—at a time of staggeringly high unemployment? Is this his big idea, to take a company that is winning in the world competitive marketplace—and clobber it?

It was another gangster move. According to two legal experts at the Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky and James Sherk, the NLRB's action was “an unbridled, unauthorized, and unlawful expansion of the regulatory power of an executive agency.” That is, the NLRB was operating as a rogue agency, pushing beyond its authorized functions, pushing beyond liberalism, beyond activism, all the way to “unlawful.”

Furthermore, the two Heritage experts noted the likely dire consequences: “If allowed to stand, [the NLRB's] actions threaten business investment and job creation as well as the employment of both unionized and nonunion workers.” In other words, the NLRB was threatening employment for all Americans, both union and nonunion. It was adding yet another threat to America's already endangered job market.

And it was worse than that. The NLRB, created in 1935, is nominally an independent agency, charged with monitoring unions and union elections. And yet during the last few years, the Obama administration has taken extraordinary steps to increase the agency's influence and reach. The NLRB is authorized to have five board members, all confirmed by the U.S. Senate; in early 2011, when it had only three members, Obama nominated a fourth prospective member, Craig Becker, a well-known union activist, most recently associate general counsel to the Service Employees International Union. Yet Becker was seen as so outspokenly liberal that the Senate refused to confirm him. So Obama appointed him anyway, using a legal but dubious maneuver called a “recess appointment”; the purpose of a recess appointment is to fill a gap, but now, instead, the Obama administration was using the recess-appointment process to advance a specific liberal agenda. This appointment enabled Becker to sit as a voting member of the NLRB through the end of 2012. In addition, Obama appointed a second liberal, prounion ideologue, Lafe Solomon, to be the general counsel of the NLRB; this position entails extensive agenda-setting powers within the agency, including the setting of board policy. Yet for Solomon too the Senate would not give confirmation, and so the Obama administration blithely named him
acting
general counsel.

One might think, of course, that both Becker and Solomon would feel chastened by their failure to gain the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate and that, as a result, they would feel somewhat constrained in their actions. But instead, both men seemed to take their temporary status as an incentive to get as much done for the prounion cause as they could in the time available. So now, under the impetus of Becker and Solomon, the NLRB was attacking Boeing and, by extension, all of American business.

Those two incidents—the $105 billion Obamacare slush fund and the NLRB attack on Boeing—reminded me that while Republicans had won much in 2010, they needed to win much more in 2012. We needed a real sweep for Republican reformers, not just nominal wins for Republican time servers.

So I began to look around to see, who would have the backbone to stop these abuses? Who is going to possess the insight and the energy to reach into the innards of the executive branch and put the clamp on these violations of custom and law? Moreover, who would take the case to the people? Who would be an effective champion of transparency and good government as well as, of course, limited constitutional government? We needed to stop $105 billion slush funds. We needed to stop left-wing activists from honeycombing into regulatory agencies. We needed to take our country back.

I knew that the next president needed to do more than manage the problem; the next president would have to
dismantle
the problem. The next president couldn't just continue piling up debt. Nor impose an unconstitutional health plan that costs too much and provides little value. Nor allow political correctness to stand in the way of jobs. Nor appoint liberal judges to advance antifamily policies. Nor fail to secure the border. Nor fail to lead overseas.

Marcus and I had to face the hard question: Was I the right person to reverse Obama's policies? Was I the right person to bring about reform and change? People were looking to me. And so, of course, Marcus and I prayed. As Proverbs tells us, we can make our own plans, but the Lord gives the right answer. Some politicos, of course, said that it was too late for me to announce, that other candidates had been running for months, even years, and were too far ahead in organization and fund-raising. Then I sensed an answer. I knew what I was being directed to do. I was called to serve.

I announced my bid for the White House on June 27, 2011. I went back to my Waterloo birthplace, joined by my family and friends. “It's great to be in Iowa,” I declared. Yes, Iowa. Home to all those Ambles and Munsons and Johnsons and Thompsons—all those hardworking folks who since the 1850s had made the Hawkeye State into the breadbasket of the world, who had raised patriotic families as well. “And even better to be in Waterloo where I was born.” Yes, I could think back to my happy childhood, when I learned so much from my parents, grandparents, and relatives and when I learned also about the Sullivan brothers, who enlisted to fight for their country and for freedom. As one of Sullivans wrote, “We will make a team together that can't be beat.”

I continued: