Rep. Michele Bachmann Spars With Bill O’Reilly On How To Solve The Economic Crisis

It’s been a busy day of Rep. Michele Bachmann news, so it’s fitting the candidate would conclude the day with a television appearance herself, talking entitlement reform with Bill O’Reilly and outlining the steps she would take to save the economy, beginning with firing Tim Geithner and repealing “Obamacare.”

Given an open-ended question on how she would confront the stock market plunge today, Rep. Bachmann noted that the first thing she would do as president is “the Treasury Secretary has to go… if your economic team isn’t working, you’ve got to get someone in who knows what to do.” She also suggested calling Congress back into session to fix the problem, and reforming entitlement programs.

O’Reilly challenged her on this last point, asking for specifics on how to reform Medicare specifically. “It needs to be tied more to the market, which it isn’t now,” she argued, which got her a follow-up: “Would you raise the age to qualify?” Her answer was only clear on a few points: “crystal clear” that “no one who is a current recipient” can lose their benefits, even if they are younger than the new qualifying age. She also noted that repealing Obamacare was important because “President Obama’s plan for Medicare is that they’ll all go into Obamacare.”

This wasn’t much of a yes-or-no answer, and O’Reilly told her so, claiming she was “dodging the question” and noting that he didn’t even think Obamacare was worth discussing because of how far into the future its implementation is and the fact that he thinks courts will repeal it. Plus, O’Reilly answered, “every Republican candidate wants to repeal Obamacare.” “There’s a difference between someone who will sign the [repeal] bill,” Rep. Bachmann advised, “and someone who will go out and campaign for it.” While the disagreements between the two were mostly in the details, it served for an interesting, surprisingly wonky debate between the two.

The segment via Fox News below: