‘Drain America First’: CD6 candidates spar over energy, economy and war

Republican incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann and two challengers who hope to unseat her to represent Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District in Washington met in Stillwater Wednesday evening for the first candidates’ forum. In front of a standing-room-only crowd, Bachmann, DFL-endorsed El Tinklenberg and Bob Anderson, the unendorsed Independence Party candidate, sparred mainly over the economy, although energy, the war in Iraq and the Stillwater lift bridge each garnered some attention.

Many people couldn’t get in through the door and watched through the foyer. The crowd, particularly Tinklenberg supporters, got rowdy at times, especially when Bachmann brought up ANWR and offshore drilling.

The best line of the night came when Tinklenberg criticized Bachmann on her offshore and ANWR drilling proposals: “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy.”

The Minnesota Independent will have full video available shortly, but here’s a preview of some of the discussion.

On the $700 billion bailout

Bob Anderson, on the Wall Street bailout: "I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer."

“I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer,” said Anderson. “We need to do something but this is not the way to go.” He said he would rather have private financiers gobble up some of the problem.

Bachmann was critical of the bailout. “We do have a very real credit crunch but I don’t believe the prescription put forward by Bush and the leadership in Congress is the right way to go.” Of the Senate version she said, “It just has different wrapping paper on it. There’s a lot of spending in there as well as the $700 billion… I will be a ‘no’ vote on that bill.”

Instead she favors privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, suspending the capital gains tax, repealing the Community Reinvestment Act and suspending mark-to-market accounting.

Tinklenberg said he also opposed the bailout. “What the economy, what the financial markets needed most of all on Monday was a sense of confidence. The rebuilding of confidence, the belief that somebody was in charge and somebody was leading and somebody was moving this forward to find a solution,” he said. “And instead what they got was uncertainty and chaos. The ‘no’ vote, you saw what the outcome was.”

He believes assisting families facing foreclosure would have lessened the crisis months ago. “I think we would have made much more progress in terms of helping to stem some of the underlying problems that we have seen in the meltdown over the last week,” he said.

The war in Iraq

Tinklenberg on Afghanistan: "That's where al-Qaida was. That's where bin Laden was. That's where we should've been focusing our effort."

Bachmann says the surge was successful. “We saw a 60-percent improvement level from July 4 to Christmas — what no one thought was possible, the peace that was brought and the calm that was brought to that region,” she said. “Then we went to March of this year, and there was a 70-percent level of improvement. Today, al-Qaida has essentially been vanquished in Iraq.”

Bachmann gave no indication when she thought the conflict might end, but said that the Iraqis should give the United States some funds. “My opinion is that Iraq is getting on its feet. They did have $76 billion in surpluses, and I believe they need to take over the funding for this measure. I don’t believe the United States should be funding the measure.”

Tinklenberg said that turning over responsibility to Iraq and a responsible end to the conflict is his policy. “I have long advocated the idea of a timeframe that would help provide the environment in which the Iraqis would stand up and take more responsibility for their region and for the security of Iraq,” he said. “It’s interesting that now the president and the Iraqi government have also agreed that we need to be moving forward with some kind of a timeframe that establishes that message to the Iraqi people: that we are not there permanently, that we are going to be removing our troops.”

He also said that the United States should never have weakened its presence in Afghanistan by engaging Iraq. “I think we need to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan. They are doing an incredible job there, but we have seen that they are not there in sufficient strength to be able to deal with the resurgence of violence in that country,” he said. “And that’s where we should’ve been fighting from the beginning. That’s where al-Qaida was. That’s where bin Laden was. That’s where we should’ve been focusing our effort. It’s unfortunate that we discovered too late that al-Qaida was not in Iraq. They were not in Iraq until we were engaged there, and that brought them into that country. And now we have to fight to try to quell the violence there while they have also been growing in strength again in Afghanistan.”

Anderson said these decisions need to be left to General Petraeus. “Terrorism is something that we’re going to be dealing with for a long time, and I think we need to be on the offense. We’ve got to be trailing them, keeping an eye on them, surveillance, and troops,” he said. “I’d leave the decision to General Petraeus.”

St. Croix River Bridge

The lift bridge over the St. Croix has been a project that has needed action for years. It’s outdated for the amount of traffic that crosses through the area into Wisconsin, but there is significant disagreement in Stillwater and surrounding communities over environmental, aesthetic and funding considerations.

Anderson didn’t know much about the issue. “I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject,’ he said. “I’d need to be educated on that, that’s for sure.”

Bachmann said: Keep the old bridge and build a new, higher capacity bridge. “I love the lift bridge. I would love to be able to see us keep it, but we also need to have a new bridge, as well. I think it is going to happen, and that’s what I want to make sure during my time in Congress, that we actually get a bill.”

Tinklenberg said community leaders need to reach a consensus on the issue to communicate it to Congress. “I want the bridge decision to reflect a consensus in the community, what the community wants for its future, how it’s going to address the needs of the community, how it’s going to connect with 36 and other communities that are a part of this and affected by it, and then I would do everything I could in terms of going after funding,” he said. “There has been a lot of discussion over a lot of years. I think it’s time to build a consensus in the community and see what the community wants to do, and then I’m going to do everything I can to help them implement it.”

Energy

Bachmann says the answer to energy problems is right under foot. "We have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia."

Bachmann talked about drilling. “American energy independence, this is something we absolutely must embrace. I don’t want to see us enriching foreign nations on foreign oil, especially when we’re sitting on the answer to our own problem — we have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia, and that’s just in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming,” she said. “We have so much oil here that we don’t need to go outside our country to be truly energy independent.”

Tinklenberg said that energy independence depends on sustainable energy. “I think that there are more things that we can be doing,” he said. “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy. It’s bad in that it maintains our dependence on petroleum, and it’s bad in that it reduces the security of our future energy policy. It means that we have used up our reserves. I agree with her: we need to be exploring more domestically, we need to identify those reserves, and we need to protect those reserves, because petroleum is going to continue to be a part of our future. But we also need to move aggressively both in the area of conservation and in the area of alternatives. We can do so much of a better job in terms of reducing consumption.”

He attacked Bachmann for not voting for renewables. “And I was disappointed that Rep. Bachmann voted against extending the tax credits for wind and solar. Those are important resources for our future and can be a part of the mix, along with what she has said about natural gas.”

Anderson said he wants a mix of everything. “I believe in ‘All of the Above.’ Drilling in Alaska? They’re telling us that it’s okay,” he said. “I’m no expert, but if the people in the state think we should do it, I guess I don’t have a problem with that.”