WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in a Tea Party rebuttal to the State of the Union address, urged President Barack Obama to "stop spending money we don't have."
Bachmann, who heads the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, delivered the response following the official Republican Party response to Obama's address, delivered by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee.
"After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks that the President signed, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have," Bachmann said in an address organized by the Tea Party Express and televised over CNN. "But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt at President Obama's direction; unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country."
Bachmann criticized Obama on Environmental Protection Agency policy she called "a job-destroying cap-and-trade system" and urged the president to agree with congressional Republicans on support for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget.
"And I believe that we are in the early days of a history-making turn here in the House of Representatives," she said.
Referring to last week's House vote in favor of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Bachmann said Tea Party supporters "must work hard to dismantle the massive government expansion that has happened over the past two years."
