Bachmann skips 2012 House Intelligence budget vote to tailgate with Iowa football fans

Bachmann missed 50% of House votes in 2011 3Q

By Karl Bremer

On the weekend of the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, Michele Bachmann chose ‘rubbing shoulders with a rowdy crowd of beer-toting tailgaters’ in Iowa over voting to fund the nation’s intelligence agencies.

At Thursday night’s debate of GOP presidential candidates, as she’s done many times in the past, Bachmann bragged about how her service on the House Intelligence Committee gives her special insight into national security issues.

“I sit on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,” she said, responding to a question about Libya (go to 24:50 in this video). “We deal with the nation’s classified secrets, and I firmly believe that the President of the United States has weakened us militarily and put us more at risk than at any time.”

Yet the following day, Bachmann skipped the House vote on the 2012 Intelligence Authorization Act, which passed 384-14. That same day, Bachmann also missed the House’s solemn remembrance of 9/11 and passage of a resolution commemorating the terrorist attacks that day.

Instead, Bachmann was getting ready to party down with University of Iowa and Iowa State University football fans in her adopted home state bright and early at 9 the next morning.

The Des Moines Register reported that “As Bachmann weaved through the crowd she was met with football fans young and old, kissing babies, chatting up college students and warmly greeting older fans. From just beyond these personal embraces, she was asked, over and over again, whether she wanted a beer.”

“She danced with babies, flipped burgers for hungry tailgaters and hugged fans outside Jack Trice Stadium on Saturday morning,” the Omaha World-Herald reported. “Bachmann autographed footballs and nuzzled babies' cheeks amidst the thousands of sports fans who turned out to watch the rivals compete. She sported a custom-made jersey, No. 12, that incorporated the logos of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and Iowa State University Cyclones and boasted to fans of both stripes that it was an ‘I-love-everybody’ look.

“She spun in circles, swarmed by a throng of reporters and some supporting state senators, smiling for the cameras of fans seeking a photo opportunity.”

Bachmann has missed an astounding 50 percent of House votes in the Third Quarter of 2011. Her voting absentee rate has skyrocketed since announcing her run for president.

Meanwhile, constituents of Minnesota’s 6^th Congressional District, which Bachmann allegedly represents, are waiting for the next Bachmann town hall meeting. She has held one in her district since her election to Congress in 2006, and that was in 2009.

Bachmann is paid an annual salary of $174,000 a year.