For Michele Bachmann federal cash is absolutely disgusting — and the portions are so small!
Despite repeatedly decrying the evils of federal spending, records obtained by the Huffington Post show Bachmann repeatedly requested money for her district even from agencies and programs she has vilified in her speeches. They include the stimulus program that she branded “fantasy economics” as well as the Environmental Protection Agency she’s said should be renamed the “Job Killing Agency.”
Among the issues she discussed in letters with various federal agencies were a transportation project in Waite Park, MN that had received nearly $2.6 billion in stimulus funding. In one “urgent” letter in June 2009 to Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood she asked the DOT to reverse a decision that would threaten the project, and wrote the next month that she was “pleased to learn” that her own state transportation agency was not going to “pull the nearly $2.8 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding set aside for the project.” In September 2009, she wrote six separate letters to DOT requesting federal funds for six separate projects in her district.
Perhaps most out of character were her interactions with the EPA, however. In 2007, she signed onto a joint letter with other Minnesota politicians asking the agency to help fund rural water initiatives in the state. In 2010, she asked for help with a $270,806 grant application to replace two vehicles at local bus company as part of the EPA’s Clean Diesel Grant Program.
Despite Bachmann’s extensive requests for federal cash, the report concluded that she was largely an ineffective advocate for her district, having obtained the least stimulus funding of any district in Minnesota.
