GLENN: I want to introduce you to somebody I just met the other day, Congressman Michele Bachmann. She is from Minnesota. And normally -- I believe I just said within the last two weeks that we should secede from Minnesota, but that's only because of Jesse Ventura and Al Franken. What are people thinking?

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Hey, it's not over yet. We have this in court right now, and Norm Coleman may yet pull this out. If we get a judge who will lawfully apply the Constitution, equal protection under the law, then we will see Norm Coleman prevail.

GLENN: You know, here's the thing, congresswoman. We have got to change the system to where if you're too stupid to vote, we don't have a court try to figure out -- or individuals try to figure out what you voted for. If you're too stupid to fill in a little bubble, you've disenfranchised yourself. You're too stupid to vote.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Well, we have a situation in Minnesota where we had votes counted, Glenn, that were date stamped November 2nd. We had votes where they were run through a machine twice they were counted. 28 precincts there were more votes than voters. We have some real irregularities. We had votes that were counted on election night if they favored Al Franken, votes counted with the recount if they favored Al Franken. So it was flip a coin: Heads, Al Franken wins, tails, Norm Coleman loses. So if we get actual equal protection under the law, then we'll be fine. We just need to have the law applied equally and fairly in all the counties and then we'll get a just result.

GLENN: Congresswoman, you said to me that there are a few of you in Washington, in congress, that are like minded, that are just fighting the fight to keep the flame alive.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: There are. There are. I would say there are probably 30 keepers of the flame over here, and I fully believe you don't need to even have a majority but you need to have a critical mass. I don't know if we're quite a critical mass, but if you have enough like minded people, the main thing we can do right now is be foreign correspondents reporting to you from enemy lines. That's really what we're doing right now because I think the American people would have their breath taken away if they saw the amount of freedom and money that will be taken away from them in the next few months, and they need to pay attention to you, they need to tune in to your new television show on Fox because they are going to hear it in too many venues what is actually happening here in D.C. and that's what I want to partner with you today, let you know the reality of what's happening here.

GLENN: Let me ask you this real quick question, then I want to get to some of the realities of what's happening. Please tell me that there are some common sense Democrats that are part of that 30 or 40.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Well, I hope so. There are new Democrats here that I haven't met yet and I will be quite blunt with you. I'm not trying to be partisan. There are very, very few Democrats who are gutsy enough to not vote with Nancy Pelosi. This woman rules with a titanium fist, a very tight ship, and she just threatened the, quote, conservative Democrats that if they don't vote for this stimulus plan that she will take away from them their one-week recess that they have to be back in their district in February. So it's kind of like --

GLENN: It's like second grade.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: It is like second grade. It's like the teacher says, "Students, class, you won't be going out for recess if you don't do what I'm telling you to do." That's exactly what she announced last week and so --

GLENN: All right. Hang on -- okay. Hang on just a second. So America, what you should hear from this is if you voted for a conservative Democrat and your person won and got in, you must get on the phone and shore them up.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Without a doubt, yeah.

GLENN: Please.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Yeah.

GLENN: Please, you don't have to come home. We understand you stay in touch with us through radio or television or Internet or whatever, just stay in touch with us. You don't have to come home. Stay there. Do the right thing. Do the hard thing. Buck the system. That's what we sent you to do.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: We need to send a big negatory on this next so-called stimulus plan. It's not stimulus. It will actually kill our economy because again, remember your listeners need to know, Glenn, we don't have this money. We didn't have the last $700 billion that we sent out the door. We had to go and borrow that from countries that don't like us very much. It's just like if you take a loan out to buy a house, a loan for let's say $100,000. You don't pay back $100,000 to the bank. You pay over $200,000 back by the time you pay interest. It's the same thing. And with the mother of all ironies, Glenn, is that the young people that voted for Obama are the ones who are voluntarily putting on the shackles and chains. They will have to pay all this back. And literally, I'm not kidding, I'm a former federal tax lawyer, the young generation could potentially be looking at tax rates of 70 and 80% in their future if we go down the road that Barack Obama --! and remember, Democrats control every lever of power now in Washington. Republicans have virtually no power. So if we go down this road, they will be looking at tax rates of 70 and 80%. That's reality.

GLENN: All right. Now, I have to -- let me play truth squad with you here just a little bit. Everything here is true except the Republicans were going down this same damn road anyway.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: No kidding. No kidding. It was embarrassing and that's why we lost and we deserve to lose because the biggest strategic blunder of '08 is that our nominee, John McCain, jumped on board with the bailout.

GLENN: Exactly right.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: And also some of the Republican leadership here in the congress. That was the biggest strategic blunder. I was against the bailout from the get-go and was very vocal here in our conference against it and probably got into trouble for it. But it was the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I'll continue to be a voice for fiscal conservativism.

GLENN: All right. So what happens -- because this is what everybody says to me: Glenn, you are just going to let everything fail? I mean, the system will need to be reboot. You are going to just, you are just going to look families in the eye and say, "Sorry, you don't have a job anymore?"

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: No, what we need is real prosperity and real stimulus, and it's actually not that difficult to do. We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world in the United States. It's at 35%. We should drastically cut the business tax rate and we should drastically cut the capital gains tax. What capital gains does, that's when you take your private money and you invest it and then when you reap the benefit of that, the gain, government wants a piece of that action. If we drastically lower capital gains, drastically lower the corporate tax rate, we will actually increase revenue to the government tremendously because we'll jump start our economic powerhouse. We could turn our economy around within about 12 to 15 months if we dramatically lower tax rates. That's true stimulus. All through the 1930s we adopted this dramatic influx of government monies, which is actually your money, and I'll tell you what after nearly a decade of dramatic ! government intervention, Henry Morgenthau who was the treasury secretary in 1939 said we have never spent more money in the history of the United States from the government to pump money into the economy. And he said, it didn't work. We can't go down this road. So we've done this before. We did it under FDR, we adopted the strategy under LBJ, under Jimmy Carter. We know it doesn't work. What works is Calvin Coolidge, JFK, Ronald Reagan: Cut taxes dramatically. That's true stimulus.

GLENN: All right. Let me ask you a real quick question, then I want to move to something else because you are a tax attorney. So I want to talk about the new treasury secretary with you but first I want to ask you this: Doesn't it seem to make common sense if you want to cut the tax rates, what you are doing is you are inviting people to invest in America, invest in American companies because they can keep more of their money, the companies can grow and keep more of their money, et cetera, et cetera, especially when -- I have not heard anybody talk about this, and I think this is colossal news. Spain, Ireland, Italy, and there's another big one that is about to be downgraded in their credit scores by Moody's. If that happens, it will crush the Euro, the Euro will spiral out of control which will -- people will rush to the dollar because they are going to look for something, which will make it harder for us to be able to export any goods beca! use they won't be able to afford it because their dollar is worth so much. Wouldn't it be the right time to cut our corporate tax rates and help businesses along through tax policies? Because people, when they're looking for a place to shelter their money from overseas, will invest in American companies?

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: You are exactly right. Because right now I was up in New York -- that's where I met you a couple of days ago when I was meeting with some investors up there. And I asked them, tell me the best formula. That's what they told me. There are very few places that people know where to go to have a safe haven for their dollar. If we dramatically cut the corporate tax rate and cut also the capital gains rate, people will see this as a long-term investment. That's why Obama's plan of redistribution of wealth -- because let's face it, that's what this is. He wants to -- his so-called tax cuts are basically welfare checks that will be written to the 40% of Americans who pay no taxes in this country. You can't give tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes. So if we cut taxes on the means of introducing more prosperity into the United States, that will allow people to have jobs and also increases.

GLENN: We used to call the bailouts corporate welfare. Now the TARP program, Obama wants to change the name of it because it's been Sullied, I don't think it ever had a good name, except corporate welfare. I'm not sure if he wants to change it back to corporate welfare. But the designer, the architect of the TARP program is possibly going to be our treasury secretary. I've seen that he didn't pay his income tax properly in an unbelievable fashion. I've seen the arrogance after he --

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: And this is why he was the Federal Reserve chair in New York. That's what's really rich about this.

GLENN: It's really amazing. Could this have been an honest mistake from a genius in the financial market? Could you make this series of mistakes?

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: A person can always make mistakes, but let's face it. When he's in a position of being the federal reserve chair from New York, you would think if you are not watching your own finances, you would have an accountant who was. This was simple paying of his self-employment taxes. He didn't pay his Social Security tax. He didn't pay his Medicare tax. Glenn, I just want to say this: The double standard that we saw during the last election with the media, present company excepted, is continuing with this appointment. Trust me, if this was a Republican administration, you would have a constant drumbeat against this fellow. This treasury secretary nominee is arguably one of the most important appointments of the Obama administration.

GLENN: It is.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: He will be observing and he will be over over a trillion dollars potentially of new spending. He will also run IRS, the very organization that's auditing your listeners, and he didn't even follow his own law. You have to have someone running the agency who observes the rule of law. Not only did he not pay his taxes, he only just paid them in November when he thought he was going to get appointed to this job, and he has problems with household help that he hired. This guy is replete with problems. And if it wasn't the Obama administration, this guy would have been run out of town. He wouldn't be allowed to be nominated. And really Obama needs to withdraw his nomination.

GLENN: Okay. Michele, I thank you very much for being on -- I'm sorry, Congresswoman Bachmann.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Michele, Glenn.

GLENN: It's nice to have you here. And I would like to know for the Republicans and Democrats, the people who are in there fighting an honest fight -- and I also have to thank you. I hate fluorescent light bulbs. I hate them. It is the Bain of my existence.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Oh, you and me both, baby.

GLENN: You were the one who wrote up the light bulb freedom of choice act.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Yeah, freedom of choice.

GLENN: I thought everybody was pro choice. I don't want fluorescent light bulbs!

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: They are horrible. Nancy Pelosi snuck into my office one night and replaced all my incandescents with these terrible pigtail looking light bulbs. It's the worst lights. They either don't work well or they -- they're terrible.

GLENN: I was in the oval office and I actually -- the President was standing there talking and I just kind of looked down into the lamp. They are fluorescents in there. If he wasn't the President of the United States, I would have had a tantrum. All right, thanks a lot. I appreciate it, Congresswoman.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: We'll stay in touch. Thanks, Glenn.