2011 State of the Union address: on Jobs

Michele Bachmann: $700B bailout & 9000 earmarks didn't keep unemployment at 8%

After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money that we don't have. But instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt. It was unlike anything we have seen in the history of the country.

Deficits were unacceptably high under President Bush, but they exploded under President Obama's direction, growing the national debt by an astounding $3.1 trillion. What did we buy? Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy, and which will put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill.

Michele Bachmann: FactCheck: bailout cost $25B, not $700B; and no IRS police

Let's take the most egregious exaggeration: "the $700 billion bailout." That figure is grossly outdated. Bachmann is referring to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which President Bush signed into law in 2008. As the CBO explained, the "authority for TARP was originally set at a maximum of $700 billion; however, that total was reduced to $475 billion." But the estimated net cost to taxpayers will be $25 billion after the government sells its stocks and the companies repay the money, as CBO estimated in its report.

Bachmann is flat-out wrong when she claims the need to hire "16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing Obama's health care bill." The CBO estimated in 2010 that IRS administrative costs would increase by $5 billion over 10 years. But that money will go to administering tax credit programs, not for IRS agents in charge of policing mandates.