BACHMANN’S HYPOCRISY EXPOSED

09/30/2006

ST. PAUL (9/29/06) – Republican Congressional candidate Michele Bachmann today sent a letter hypocritically demanding that Patty Wetterling pull a campaign ad. The referenced ad questions Bachmann’s support for imposing a 23-percent tax on all goods sold. While Wetterling’s ad properly questions Bachmann’s position on a policy, Bachmann and her surrogates have blanketed the 6th District with demonstrably false attacks on Wetterling.

A recent television ad of Bachmann’s tries to claim she has a strong record of accomplishment related to tax issues.

The ad claims:

- Bachmann “has a strong record of fighting for lower taxes”
- Bachmann “wanted to end the alternative minimum tax”
- Bachmann will always be clear on “where [she] stands on the issues”

In fact:

- Bachmann voted in favor of increasing the cigarette tax [Pioneer Press, 5/21/05]
- Bachmann voted in favor of raising property taxes [HF 141/SF 104, 7/13/05]
- Bachmann voted against repealing the alternative minimum tax [SF 1505, 5/5/03]

Additionally, a flier sent by Bachmann’s Washington cronies, the NRCC, makes claims about Patty Wetterling that are objectively false. The flier claims that Wetterling did not vote in 2000, 2002 or 2004. But according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s voting history for Patricia Lynn Wetterling, Wetterling voted in the general election in all three of the years in question, and in the 2004 primary.

The flier also claims that Wetterling opposes making the Bush tax cuts permanent, when her position has consistently been that she will advocate to roll back only those cuts given to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

“Michele Bachmann knows full well that outright lies are being distributed by her campaign and on her campaign’s behalf by her friends in Washington,” Minnesota DFL Chair Brian Melendez said. “And she has done nothing to correct the record, or to hold herself to a higher standard than the embarrassingly low one that her Republican organizations in Washington and in Minnesota have set.

“For Michele Bachmann to suddenly take umbrage with a hard-hitting ad that fairly questions her support of a national sales tax is pure hypocrisy. Ironically, the sources that Bachmann cites to support her outrage agreed that the attacks on Wetterling are ‘misleading,’ ‘NOT TRUE’ and ‘FALSE.’”

From Eric Black’s “Is that a fact?”: “The first TV ad from the national GOP group aired this week repeats one of the misleading claims made in a series of fliers it sent to Sixth District voters last week. It portrays Wetterling as opposing making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent, but she actually has called for keeping all cuts in place except those aimed at the top 1 percent of households.” [Star Tribune, Eric Black, 9/29/06]

From Pat Kessler’s “Reality Check”: “‘Patty Wetterling just doesn’t get it,’ the ad said. ‘Lowering taxes helps families and creates jobs. Yet Patty Wetterling opposes making our tax relief permanent.’ That is simply NOT TRUE… ‘That means higher taxes on working families,’ the ad said. ‘It means reducing child tax credits. And it means bringing back the marriage penalty. And bringing back the death tax on family businesses and farms.’ That’s FALSE.” [Reality Check, Pat Kessler, 9/28/06]