Bachmann ‘open to’ debate on eliminating corporate income taxes

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) said she was “open to” former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) call to eliminate corporate income taxes.

“I’m open to having that debate,” Bachmann said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

But she cautioned that “if we went that route, then we’d have to have a fundamental restructuring of the tax code.”

“What we would have to do then is rejigger other elements to define revenue and what revenues would be needed to the economy,” she said.

In the short term, however, the Tea Party favorite said President Obama could lower corporate taxes to aid American businesses.

“I do believe that the president at minimum should lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent so that businesses can see that they will have a more competitive rate,” she said.

Bachmann has made tax reform and rolling back regulations the centerpiece of her plan to boost job growth and jump start the economy.

Bachmann said if elected president, the first thing she would do would be to “bring about repatriation of income from American corporations that have earned money overseas … we have over $1.2 trillion in earnings that we could bring immediately to kickstart the economy, which would be a true stimulus.”

Bachmann hit hard at Obama’s efforts to revive the nation’s economy. She accused him of proposing “temporary gimmicks” and said she would rely on “private-sector solutions versus government solutions which the president has put forward.”

The president will deliver his proposals to boost employment in an address Thursday before a joint session of Congress.

Bachmann did, however, praise Obama for his decision Friday to shelve a major planned Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would have tightened smog standards. She said Obama acted “wisely” and “recognized that that would bring about more job losses at a time when we could ill afford them.”

But she also called on him to do more, including putting the brakes on his healthcare reform law.

“If the president would also announce a moratorium on implementation of Obamacare … I’m just telling you all across America that would [cause] a sigh of relief for businesses because Obamacare quite literally is killing jobs all across the country even today,” she said.

Bachmann also said her controversial comment suggesting that a recent earthquake and hurricane were messages from God was a “metaphor.”

“Obviously I was speaking metaphorically,” she said. “That was clear to the audience. It was clear to me.”

Bachmann was asked by host Bob Schieffer if she believed “God uses the weather to send people messages.”

“I’m a woman of faith and a woman of prayer,” she replied. “But the comment that I made right then was a metaphor. That was very simply what I was doing.”

Bachmann, the winner of the Ames, Iowa, straw poll, has fallen behind in recent polling to newcomer Texas Gov. Rick Perry who has assumed front-runner status in the race for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination.

---