Bachmann: President Insecure About Jobs Proposal

2012 candidate on Obama's plan to create jobs, GOP field

This is a rush transcript from "Your World," August 31, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST OF, “YOUR WORLD”: All right, curiouser and curiouser.

Now we know the president wants to address a joint session of Congress a week from tonight. Enter the speaker of the House, John Boehner, who says, oh, I don’t think so, big guy. You are going to have to make it the next night.

Neither referring, of course, to the big Republican presidential candidate debate on the night of the 7th. Then word from the NFL, that’s the same night, the 8th, that the New Orleans Saints are playing the Green Bay Packers. So the president would be up against that game and John Boehner the night before.

It’s in your ballpark, Mr. President.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: On the phone with us now, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

Very good to have you, Congresswoman.

Boy, this is interesting. What is the protocol here, Congresswoman?

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Always a delight.

Well, you know, of course, this will be a negotiation. And I think what John Boehner is pointing out is that, clearly, this administration has a great deal of insecurity about their jobs plan and the lack thereof.

And I think what John Boehner is saying is that we want to give full attention to what the president is going to say. And so, rather than the president hiding his speech, and trying to divert the American people away from hearing from the presidential candidates on what their assessment is of President Obama’s job that he has failed to do for the economy, John Boehner is rightly saying, let’s have the American people watch you. And let’s have you have to address the American people on jobs.

CAVUTO: But I might want to watch the New Orleans Saints play the Green Bay Packers the next night.

(LAUGHTER)

BACHMANN: I can completely understand that. Absolutely, I can understand that.

CAVUTO: OK. So it is a riddle wrapped in a media conundrum, I guess.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: Congresswoman, it is interesting in this big South Carolina debate coming up that, out of nowhere, Mitt Romney, who had said he wouldn’t participate, now is.

I’m wondering if he looking at surging poll numbers for you and Governor Rick Perry. What do you think?

BACHMANN: Well, I think that what people are recognizing is that South Carolina is an extremely important state. South Carolina chooses the next president of the United States.

I just finished spending two weeks there myself. And the people are ready for action. They want to replace the next president. We had an extremely outstanding reception there. I was with Representative Tim Scott in Charleston. We did a town hall. Governor Nikki Haley came by.

And our focus was on turning the economy around and jobs. That is really what people care about. They are frosted that the president of the United States has an opportunity to have thousands of jobs created through Boeing, but the president of the United States, through his serious liberal labor appointee on NLRB, has made that impossible to do so.

So, the president is not terribly popular in South Carolina right now.

CAVUTO: But it doesn’t stop Democratic attacks on Tea Partiers, per se, but this particular one, as you might have heard, Congresswoman, was over the top.

Democratic Congressman Andre Carson from Indiana -- you know the story now -- "Some of them in this Congress right now, this Tea Party movement, would love to see you and me hanging on a tree. Some of them right now in Congress are comfortable with where we were 50, 60 years. But this is a new age with a black president and the Congressional Black Caucus."

Your reaction?

BACHMANN: Well, this is the best they could do. Again, they have no plans. The president’s poll numbers are tanking. They don’t what to do about the economy because they only have one plan, which is spend more, tax more, borrow more.

Quite honestly, that is all we have seen. And the president keeps giving speeches to announce he will give another speech that maybe yet one day we will see a plan come from him. And the only inklings that we have are that we will probably see a son of stimulus.

So none of this is not setting very well. So all they could do is make outrageous statements about people who all they want to do is see the country turn around and get back on the right track. And this is the only thing people talk to me about, Neil. They want job creation; they want the economy turned around. Obama is not the man to do it.

CAVUTO: Congresswoman, we have heard on the hustings here that you and Governor Rick Perry have had conversations. I guess you candidates obviously, rightly, talk with each other all the time. But he has always spoken of you in particular very favorably; even though it appears -- and it is still early and these polls don’t necessarily mean anything -- he’s rocketing in the polls, slowing what had been your momentum.

What do you think of that? What do you think of him? In general, is he hurting you?

BACHMANN: Well, I think it is great to have people come into the race.

And, of course, this is natural when you have a new candidate in. That sucks a lot of oxygen out of the room. And of course the numbers do deviate. But we are very comfortable with where we are. And, again, I have been working extremely hard.

We had a stunning victory in Iowa in the straw poll. From there, we have spent two weeks in South Carolina, four days down in Florida. Now I am back in Iowa. So we are working extremely hard. And we have got a solid base of support here. And we are going to continue to grow that level of support.

And I look forward to the debates. We have got five debates coming up in a month’s time. And I think that people will get to sort out and see where all of the candidates sit, because one think people know about me, Neil, I have spent my last five years in Washington, D.C., being a champion and a voice for the values and the principles that people believe.

All of these issues that we’re dealing with right now with President Obama; I have been on the front lines. I have been on the tip of the spear. I have fought against Obamacare and introduced the repeal. I introduced the repeal bill for Dodd-Frank.

CAVUTO: All right.

BACHMANN: I have been fighting them. And so I am anxious to talk about that in the debate.

CAVUTO: All right, and we will watch just that, whether you are up against the president of the United States or not.

Congresswoman, thank you very, very much.

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