Sunday, March 6th, 2011
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/06/michele-bachman-obamacare-is-a-crime-against-democracy/
Appearing on Meet The Press Sunday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) -- the chair of the Tea Party Caucus -- told host David Gregory that the health care reform measure pushed by President Obama was a "crime against democracy."
In response to a question from Gregory about the compromise recently offered by Obama -- that states could opt out of participating in the health care reform in 2014 if they could expand coverage without raising costs -- Bachmann pronounced herself unconvinced.
She said:
"Well, David, that's not a "give" at all. And in fact, all that is is a pretext for implementing a single-payer program. If you recall the President's entire statement, he said the states can opt out as long as they state within the requirements of all of Obamacare, unless they want to go with a single payer program. Again, from the very beginning, it has been said that Obama is a crime against democracy. It has been a deception from the beginning. Remember, the President told us it was a mandate, not a tax. Now, in federal court he's arguing it's a tax, not a mandate. We were all told our premiums would go $2500, and instead they're spiking up by 20 and 40 percent."
Bachmann was also fired up about what she termed a "deception" by Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). In Bachmann's description, the trio "hid" appropriations in the health care legislation to allow the Administration to implement the reforms.
"It is shocking the revelations of all the money that's been spent. There was a Congressional Research Service report that just was issued in February and we discovered that secretly, unbeknownst to members of Congress, over $105 billion was hidden in the Obamacare legislation to fund the implementation of Obamacare. This s something that wasn't known. This money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill. And we worked very hard to discover $61 billion in cuts that we could put forward, get to the President. So in effect, David, we've taken one step forward and two steps back, because we've found now that $105 billion has already been incorporated."
When the health care law was being debated, and in the wake of its passage in 2010, an oft-heard refrain from tea party advocates was that elected representatives hadn't read the entire bill before they passed it.