we re back. joining me live from our bus tour in iowa, 16 days to go until the caucuses, republican presidential candidate congresswoman michele bachmann of minnesota. congresswoman, welcome back to meet the press. good morning, david. a pleasure to be with you this morning. so you heard speaker boehner. my question to you is, under what circumstances would you support an extension of the payroll tax cut through 2012? well, i didn t support it a year ago when it was first proposed. and the reason why i didn t is because it it denied $111 billion to the social security trust fund. i didn t think that that was a good thing to do last year. i don t think it s a good thing to do this year. and remember, the reason why president obama proposed it in the first place was to create jobs. there isn t one shred of evidence that that created jobs. so it defeated its purpose, plus it put senior citizens at risk
we re back. joining me live from our bus tour in iowa, 16 days to go until the caucuses, republican presidential candidate congresswoman michele bachmann of minnesota. congresswoman, welcome back to meet the press. good morning, david. a pleasure to be with you this morning. so you heard speaker boehner. my question to you is, under what circumstances would you support an extension of the payroll tax cut through 2012? well, i didn t support it a year ago when it was first proposed. and the reason why i didn t is because it it denied $111 billion to the social security trust fund. i didn t think that that was a good thing to do last year. i don t think it s a good thing to do this year. and remember, the reason why president obama proposed it in the first place was to create jobs. there isn t one shred of evidence that that created jobs. so it defeated its purpose, plus it put senior citizens at risk by denying the $111 billion to
by denying the $111 billion to the social security trust fund. all it s doing is adding to the debt. the actuary for social security takes issue with that in terms of accelerating insolvency for social security. and, you know, last summer, during the debt fight, you made the point on this program, that the debt ceiling should not be extended, in your view, because the american people were against extending it. so by that logic, congresswoman, look at the polling, 58% of those polled favor extending the payroll tax cut. well, if you go back to last summer, what we should have done is had all 535 members of congress sit down together and deal with this problem of overspending. because the question at that time was, should we raise the credit card limit so that the country can go an additional $2.4 trillion in debt. that s all we re doing right now. we re putting our american people more and more at debt. and i will tell you, all across iowa, all across south carolina,
i don t think it s a good thing to do this year. and remember, the reason why president obama proposed it in the first place was to create jobs. there isn t one shred of evidence that that created jobs. so it defeated its purpose, plus it put senior citizens at risk by denying the $111 billion to the social security trust fund. all it s doing is adding to the debt. the actuary for social security takes issue with that in terms of accelerating insolvency for social security. and, you know, last summer, during the debt fight, you made the point on this program, that the debt ceiling should not be extended, in your view, because the american people were against extending it. so by that logic, congresswoman, look at the polling, 58% of those polled favor extending the payroll tax cut. well, if you go back to last summer, what we should have done is had all 535 members of congress sit down together and deal with this problem of overspending. because the question at that time was, should
coming up until the midnight hour and this is what people are so tired of. they want government to actually pu all the games aside and get something done. they want to get the who back on track. that is what i want to do as president of the united states, too. neil: if memory served me right you have not been a fan of the payroll tax cut extension, not only because it is not paid for but there could be more short term gain than long term solutions here. if democrats, though, have drop a potential provision that bothers a lot of republicans like the surtax on billionaires, would you be more inclined to support it? guest: no, i opposed it last december. and i encourage my colleagues to opposed it last december, too, because it reduces the employee share of the payroll tax. last year it was $111 billion