Michele Bachmann Income Tax Plan: Everyone Should Pay Two Happy Meals' Worth (VIDEO)

Michele Bachmann defended her plan to extend federal income tax to everyone, even if they pay as little as $10 per year.

She said the current system, under which 47 percent of people pay federal income taxes, is unfair because even those who do not pay federal income taxes benefit from the government. The 47 percent figure applies only to federal income taxes, not state income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes and other local taxes.

"Even if it means paying the price of two Happy Meals a year, $10, everyone can afford to pay at least that," she said.

Bachmann said the current tax code will not help to create jobs, adding a jab at Obama's political adviser David Axelrod.

"President Obama's plan for job creation has absolutely nothing to do with the true people who know how to create jobs," she said. "He should really be going to job creators if he wants to know how to create jobs. Instead, he continues to go to General Axelrod in Chicago to look for his orders on how to deal with the economy."

Comments

[Carolyn Scott]

09:23 PM on 12/10/2011

PLEASE tell me how you cut back on IRS staffing (and all other federal agencies) and also manage to process returns to collect taxes of $10 per year from everyone??? How much will it cost to collect that $10???? If I think about the things this woman says much longer I think my brain will explode.

[Hiker54]

01:00 PM on 11/14/2011

Happy meals are the kids meals, right?

So what she's saying is don't feed your kids a couple of meals a month and send that money to the govt.

Right Michelle, much better than raising taxes on the wealthy by a fraction. Why, they might have to put off buying that 6th vacation home a couple of months.

[Buster Nitchski]

09:04 PM on 11/12/2011

How can one person be so consistently idiotic? She would blow my mind saying the things she does if she was just someone I knew. Throw in the fact that she was elected to congress and is a final runner for the Presidentcy and......damn! Freakin' mindboggling!!! Have another corndog!

....and this time its happy meals. What a horrible analogy. Poor people should forego food - their children's food! so that rich people can rest better knowing EVERYBODY paid something?!! So that some kind of symbolic gester can be made?!


It puts the whole notion conservatives give when they say 'if we raised taxes on billionaires it wouldn't put a dent in the deficit' into a new light. If that were true, what the he11 is taxing the poor two happy meals supposed to accomplish?

[Darter75]

08:20 PM on 11/12/2011

I don't think Michelle Bachmann could say anything that the liberals and left-wingers would like. Even if she read a speech of Obamas off his teleprompter they would tear it to shreds. I don't know who has my vote but at least I listen to what the other guy has to say. She seems ok to me and I agree too many people take from the government funds without putting anything in. Most of the people I know pay taxes and also give to church and to other charities, myself included.

[Hiker54]

12:53 PM on 11/14/2011

Most of those people would love to have a job that paid them enough to have to pay income taxes.

People seem to have this idea that people living at the poverty level are happy to sit around the house watching TV (if they have one) and feeding their kids rice and beans (when they can afford it).

Sure, there will always be the few that scam the system, but the majority worry daily about feeding their kids and keeping a roof over their heads.

[Dragontech]

07:54 PM on 11/12/2011

If she is referring to billionaires and large corporations when she talks about "job creators", they are not. They can tell how to sit on your profits, investing them in off-shore accounts and shelters. This is what we get when we give the top 0.01% tax breaks and subsidies. We do NOT get jobs.

[anne1stoftwo]

03:31 PM on 11/12/2011

Maybe she is hoping that the POOR CHILDREN will suffer if they forego a meal or two. She is insane and mean and uncaring for the poor children that actually go to be hungry in the United States.

[Col Hogan]

03:14 PM on 11/11/2011

Bachmann is at least two fries short of a happy meal.
and definitely, Out To Lunch.

[bobncar]

12:33 PM on 11/11/2011

Two happy meals? as in McD's? ......yeah sounds about right for her.....take it from the kids,....trickle that austerity right down to the youngest ones.

[drwtsn]

06:40 PM on 11/12/2011

A recent study showed that most of the people frequenting fast food establishments such as McD are the middle class, not the poor. Many people cannot afford a happy meal for their children, but Bachmann probably cannot even conceive of that fact.

[Calyndula]

12:21 PM on 11/11/2011

It's so easy to say what "poor people" are "capable of paying" when sitting comfortably in one's cushy house with heat and food and everything a person could need.

[Jack Mahoney]

11:50 AM on 11/11/2011

For those of us who are not experts but would like to know more about economics: John Quiggin, an Australian economist, explains in "Zombie Economics" why lame ideas like Trickle Down economics just don't seem to die. Highly recommended.

As Will Rogers so eloquently described Trickle Down: “The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”

[Rixter1960]

10:51 AM on 11/11/2011

Isn't what she's calling for is for the working poor to forego their personal tax exemption, child care and dependant credits, pay local and state taxes, and then chip in two "Happy Meals" worth of skin from what's left of their meager earnings if they're lucky enough to even have a job?

[mamasilverhair]

07:04 AM on 11/11/2011

Dear Michelle... That is only another plan to give bankers money. You and I know you will leave EIC intact... That means the money of 10 bucks is only a scam on real tax payers who are upset... EIC will give them that 10 back and then some... and the only ones to make out...BANKERS who move the money around... What a bunch of hooey you suggest....

[yozampj]

02:43 AM on 11/11/2011

Off topic but related: I also loved Cain's comment that his 9-9-9 plan would do nothing to his taxes because he is unemployed, and he'd probably be in the 9-0-9 plan. Cute. He may not have a salaried job, but he can't expect us to believe he has no income.

[yozampj]

02:37 AM on 11/11/2011

And not one comment about closing corporate loopholes that allow multi billion dollar corporations to pay little or no federal tax in the U.S.

[mamasilverhair]

07:06 AM on 11/11/2011

It is just hooey...EIC isn't going away...only ones going to make money off the "symbolic" 10 spot...Bankers... OMG... Yea there you go making bankers money... Wow...just like a good little GOPer...

[Hunter West]

12:56 AM on 11/11/2011

Keep big government out of our Happy Meals. We need less regulations on the fast food free market, not more!

[Jack Mahoney]

11:49 AM on 11/11/2011

LOL. Thanks.