Republican candidate Michele Bachmann is touting her work as a “federal tax lawyer” as one of her qualifications for the presidency and she’s calling for the kind of tax cuts that were enacted during the Reagan era.
“The economy worked. We had an economic miracle in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and I want to bring those positive solutions into the tax code and get rid of the current mess that we have and put in a living laboratory of what worked in the 1980s,” Bachmann said late this afternoon during a speech in Denison.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan approved a tax package that cut individual income tax rates by 23 percent across-the-board. In 1986, Reagan approved another round of income tax cuts. Reagan also approved legislation which closed so-called tax “loopholes.”
Bachmann was a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service from 1988 to 1993, handling tax collection cases. Bachmann has said the work showed her how devastating high tax rates can be.
“The big problem, when I talk to farmers and when I talk to businesspeople around Iowa, they tell me one thing: ‘Could you please, Michele, do something about getting the federal government off our back? We’re tired of the federal government,'” Bachmann said this evening in Denison, before asking the crowd there: “Do you agree?”
AUDIO of Bachmann’s opening comments in Denison. Bachmann is currently in her third term in Congress. She is scheduled to campaign in Sioux City later this evening.
(Audio from Michael Earl at KDSN Radio in Denison; editing by Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)