Michele Bachmann: Husband Received $137,000 in Medicaid Funds

By: Nsenga Burton | Posted: June 29, 2011 at 5:32 AM

Rep. Michele Bachmann "misspeaks" again. (Getty)

Fresh from our "Hypocrisy" file, MSNBC is reporting that Marcus Bachmann, the husband of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), has been collecting annual Medicaid payments totaling more than $137,000 for the treatment of patients since 2005, according to new figures obtained by NBC News.

The previously unreported payments are on top of the $24,000 in federal and state funds that Bachmann & Associates, the clinic founded by Marcus Bachmann, a clinical therapist, received in recent years under a state grant to train its employees, state records show. The figures were provided to NBC News in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The clinic offers "quality Christian counseling."

The $161,000 in payments from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to her husband's clinic appear to contradict some of Michelle Bachmann's public accounts this week when she was first asked about the extent to which her family has benefited from government aid. Contacted this afternoon, Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for Bachmann, said the congresswoman was doing campaign events and was not immediately available for comment.

Questions about the Bachmann family's receipt of government funds arose this week after a Los Angeles Times story reported that a family farm in which Michelle Bachmann is a partner had received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies.

When asked by anchor Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday about the story's assertion that her husband's counseling clinic had also gotten federal and state funds, Bachmann replied that it was "one-time training money that came from the federal government. And it certainly didn't help our clinic." She even denied that she and her husband got the money, although NBC found that they had been receiving the funds for six years.

That doesn't sound like one-time to us. This sounds like 2012 GOP presidential contender Michele Bachmann is making stuff up to justify her hypocritical loathing of government funding while in fact receiving government funding. It appears that the Bachmanns seek government funding where they can get it -- i.e., a farm and a clinic.

We're not mad at them for making use of government funding, just mad that her platform blasts the government for unnecessary spending and those who make use of those services. We get it: She misspoke again. We also get that her platform means no funding for the rest of us, just for the Bachmanns. Glad we cleared that up.