Bachmann campaign illustrates wide partisan gulf

WASHINGTON -- Her first order of business is well-known: Repeal "Obamacare."

That's the issue that thrust Michele Bachmann into the national spotlight and provided a rallying cry for her White House campaign.

Even as Bachmann's poll numbers have tumbled in recent weeks, her continued appearances on the campaign trail are providing voters in Minnesota and across the nation a revealing look at just how deeply she disagrees with Democrats and even fellow Republicans on issues such as taxes and spending, federal food safety regulations and the Arab Spring.

The massive tax and spending cuts she is championing on the campaign trail, for example, are more radical than any Congress or the White House has ever seriously considered.

"The first bill I would send to Congress would be the one to turn the economy around, and that would be dealing with the tax code," Bachmann said at a recent campaign stop in Virginia. Her administration would start with dramatic cuts in corporate taxes, she said, then move to "lower the regulatory burden" on companies, including the Wall Street reforms passed in response to the nation's financial crisis and the insurance requirements imposed under President Obama's health care law.

"The repeal of Obamacare needs to be a part of that package as well," Bachmann said.

But friends and foes alike say that given the current partisan gridlock, Bachmann's Tea Party opposition to this summer's debt ceiling compromise would be politically problematic. For example, analysts across the political spectrum agree her strategy for avoiding national default -- largely limiting federal payments to interest on the debt -- would require a minimum 35 percent across-the-board reduction in the size of the government.

'You would see a firestorm'

To Bachmann's Democratic critics, an open fight over such cuts would be a good thing. "There would be a huge fight," said Minnesota budget expert Steve Francisco, a veteran federal lobbyist and aide to the late Rep. Bruce Vento. "When you start seeing hard numbers applied to specific programs and if it results in slashing Medicare, Medicaid and possibly Social Security benefits, I think you would see a firestorm that might make the health care debate look like a picnic."

Bachmann has been mostly silent about specific cuts she favors, apart from her frequent references to turning out the lights at the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Earlier this year she detailed $430 billion in potential budget cuts. A conservative wish list laid out which federal programs she would like to see downsized or eliminated, from farm subsidies to homeland security grants. But that would be a tiny down payment on the small-government agenda she has preached on the stump.

One guide would be her vote for the House GOP budget plan drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. That plan would cut the deficit by trillions over a decade and turn Medicare into a voucher program. But it still would not eliminate the nation's debt over the next four to eight years.

Bachmann's critics are quick to note the discrepancy between her support for the Ryan budget and her opposition to raising the debt level needed to finance it. But one thing is certain: Bachmann believes Congress should deliver spending cuts far deeper than the ones that nearly shut down the federal government three times this year.

"To prevent any future increases in the debt, one would have to balance the budget starting right now," said Brookings Institution scholar Bill Frenzel, a Minnesota Republican who once served on the U.S. House Budget Committee. "It is beyond the realm of possibility."

Role of marriage

Bachmann's goals on social issues could conceivably be helped by a future Republican Congress that provided a smoother path for her agenda, whether she remains in Congress or captures a higher office. "It can be done with Washington leadership that is committed to rolling back the federal government to its level of a decade ago," said Ed Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank.

Still, Bachmann could not be guaranteed a pliant partnership with other congressional Republicans, who tend to see her as anything but a team player and who have kept her outside their leadership circle.

Bachmann could be expected to favor reinstating the ban on being openly gay in the military. But the issue of same-sex unions puts her on the edge between her opposition to gay marriage and her support for states' rights. She supports a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, but has said that, as president, she "would not be going into the states to overturn their state law."

Some religious conservatives might expect more from a Bachmann presidency, Twin Cities ministry director Gary Borgendale said. "I think there'd be more pressure, and there should be, because of the support that comes out of the evangelical base."