While New Orleans congressman Joseph Cao was calling on BP execs to commit "hara-kiri" over the Gulf oil disaster, fellow Republican Michele Bachmann of Minnesota urged them to hang tough against getting "fleeced." "If I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there -- 'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced,'" she told Washington Post blogger David Weigel, who covers the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Her remarks came after a speech at the Heritage Foundation luncheon Tuesday in which she took aim at President Obama, who took pains in an Oval office address hours later to show Americans he's in command of the situation. Bachmann accused Obama of "voting present" on the Gulf oil disaster, according to Weigel's account. Weigel blogged that he asked Bachmann after her speech whether she supports efforts to lift the cap on BP's liability for claims from the oil spill. Her response: "They have to lift the liability cap…" But that was followed by her remarks about fleecing BP. The quote, in full: "But if I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there -- 'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and make chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest -- they've got to be legitimate claims." Weigel quoted her further: "The other thing we have to remember is that Obama loves to make evil whatever company it is that he wants to get more power from. He makes them evil, and what we've got to ask ourselves is: Do we really want to be paying $9 for a gallon of gas? Because that could be the final result of this."