Congresswoman Bachmann, Challenger Tinklenberg Have Different Strategems for Dealing with Finances

Press Release

Congresswoman Bachmann, challenger Tinklenberg have different strategems for dealing with finances

By T.W. Budig

Tinklenberg, noting that Bachmann serves on the U.S. House financial services committee, opined that Bachmann -- if she saw the meltdown coming -- could have spoken out.

"I have said and continue to believe we had to do something -- I didn't support the bill (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson proposed initially," said Tinklenberg.

Although Tinklenberg indicated the bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last week was an improvement over earlier legislation, he would have liked to have seen more of a focus on keeping people in their homes. "I am an old mayor," said Tinklenberg, former mayor of Blaine. "I know you don't have to have many houses in a neighborhood boarded up, or grass growing -- look abandoned -- before it has an effect on the whole neighborhood," he said.

One of the next issues Congress will need to face is the impact foreclosures will have on property tax rates and the abilities of cities to provide services, Tinklenberg said.

"Because those abandoned, those empty homes require even more services than a home with someone living in it," he said.

Tinklenberg supports granting bankruptcies judges some ability to reset mortgages because mortgages are so enmeshed in the financial system they're difficult to extract, he opined.

While indicating he would have voted for the final bill, Tinklenberg said the bill signed into law last week made him uncomfortable.

"I think again we needed to communicate that sense of direction and clarity and leadership. And instead, it got all bogged up in that," said Tinklenberg of the expanded bill.

Some of the extras tacked onto the bill, such as the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, he supported, he noted.

"Thrown out like that, it had a cynical feel to it," Tinklenberg opined of the parity legislation.

Tinklenberg told reporters after the 6th Congressional District debate in Stillwater last Wednesday (Sept. 24) that he would have voted for the first bailout bill taken up and rejected by the House earlier in the week.

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