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Published January 26, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "Your World," May 16, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Now look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN.: The American people have not been told the truth, and what we need to know is, what did the White House know, and when did they know it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: All right.
To Minnesota Republican Congresswoman, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. She's demanding a lot more answers from the White House.
And, Congresswoman, you're saying you're not getting any. Right?
BACHMANN: Hi, Neil.
Well, we're just in the initial phases, and I think the best thing that the president could do for himself is to direct everyone within his administration, beginning within the White House, to fully cooperate with the Congressional committees.
Go ahead, voluntary release e-mails, text messages, phone calls, be forthright about conversations that were had, because there's this freaky coincidence across federal agency lines that decision after decision after decision was somehow coincidentally made that would further and help the president's re-election chances last fall. And thereby ,they were rewarding their political allies, while at the same time they were punishing their political opponents.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I think now is when we need to get some real answers, particularly when we're talking about the most feared agency in the United States, the IRS, which will be the new enforcer of the president's health care plan, ObamaCare, which comes fully online about seven months from now.
CAVUTO: You know, in that ObamaCare and the new health care law, no less than 49 different financial provisions would be overseen by the IRS; 16,000 IRS agents would be put in charge of that.
BACHMANN: That's right.
CAVUTO: The administration had a very terse note to Republicans to say, it's the law, and more or less saying, look, this is the way it is and we can go about back and forth as to whether the IRS overstepped its bounds on this going after conservative group thing, but essentially don't rethink and redo something that has been etched into law when it comes to the IRS implementing a lot of this health care stuff.
What do you make of that?
BACHMANN: Well, I'm a former federal tax litigation attorney for the Treasury Department.
I was an IRS lawyer. And we had very strict jurisdictional limits. It would have been impossible for any of to us have gone rogue and do something like we saw within the IRS. This is a tremendous infringement on people's liberties, and again, think of what is happening as you and I speak. There's a large national database, never seen before, the scope and breadth and width of all our personal information. The most intimate personal information on each one of us, our health care records, is inputted into that national database.
We don't even know exactly who will the one who will have access to that information in the database. So, now, whereas a week ago people would have been incredulous that we would have asked these questions about the IRS and whether they could our personal information against us, now it's very reasonable. Because someone is a political opponent of the administration, could they be potentially denied health care or denied access?
CMS is supposed to run that data. But what will the interface be with the IRS? If they have to enforce, presumably, shouldn't they have access to data? These are all reasonable questions to ask and I think that's why the American people -- we all thought after the election, Neil, that Obamacare was here to stay.
The tables have changed in the last week. My bill is to repeal Obamacare. Within the next few hours, we're going to repeal Obamacare in the House of Representatives.
(CROSSTALK)
CAVUTO: Even though that likely wouldn't go any further in the Senate, right?
BACHMANN: I will tell you not today under Harry Reid, but I will tell you the 2014 elections could be very different. We could see a Republican- controlled Senate, and Mitch McConnell was with me this morning at a press conference. I believe that if the Senate flips, we will see a repeal through the Senate, and then President Obama will millions of Americans who have been thrown off their employer's health insurance, millions of Americans who are jobless, millions of Americans who have seen spikes in their health insurance premiums. And I think he may have to, in a historical setting, repeal his signature piece of legislation that will be bringing so much misery to this economy and to millions of Americans.
CAVUTO: All right. Well, we will see. As we said, a lot depends on those midterm elections, I guess.
But, Congresswoman, I did -- you mentioned the Senate a second ago. And I did want to get back to something Senator Bob Menendez, who has said of the Benghazi revelations that it's been fully vetted now, more or less, move on. I want you to react to this. This is Bob Menendez.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ, D-N.J.: We have fully vetted this issue. We have held hearing after hearing. We have on both sides had the opportunity to have our questions answered. In fact, in total, between the House and the Senate, there have been 11 hearings on Benghazi.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: I think he is saying, Congresswoman, move on. What do you think?
BACHMANN: Yes, he is saying, be quiet and go away. And with all due respect to the senator, that's an insult the memories of four dead Americans. Just only last week, last Thursday, a week ago today, we heard for the first time from individuals who were on site, on the ground, including Mr. Hicks, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Nordstrom. And they told us clearly this was an attack and they told us much information that for the first time the American people heard. We have only started scratching this story. And what people are going find out is that this is going to go on for a very long time.
The administration will eventually have to tell the truth, and the worst revelation of all, Neil, would be if we find out that the president failed to send in American military rescue support because of his own reelection chances.
We're not saying that is what is happening. But that would be the worst- case scenario. We hope that it doesn't come to that, but we need to get to the bottom of this and find out if in fact that's why the president failed to send in help for our men on the ground.
CAVUTO: So much we don't know.
Congresswoman, thank you very much. Good seeing you again.
BACHMANN: Good to see you, Neil.
CAVUTO: All right.
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