Michele Bachmann compares Holocaust to future taxes

Delivering a speech to New Hampshire Republicans on Saturday, Tea Party caucus leader and potential GOP 2012 contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) compared the tax burden future generations may face to the Holocaust.

She recalled hearing stories of the Holocaust when she was a child, and wondering whether her mother had done anything to prevent the loss of millions of lives. Bachmann said the lack of "economic liberty" future generations may face will lead them to wonder whether their parents could have done anything to reverse the economic direction, the Associated Press reported.

"I tell you this story because I think in our day and time, there is no analogy to that horrific action," she said, referring to the Holocaust. "But only to say, we are seeing eclipsed in front of our eyes a similar death and a similar taking away. It is this disenfranchisement that I think we have to answer to."

Bachmann was speaking to a crowd of about 200 people at a conservative forum at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester. Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum, two other conservatives with 2012 buzz, also spoke at the forum.

Bachmann called the continuation and creation of social programs "fantasy economics," and claimed that future generations could lose as much as 75 percent of their incomes to income taxes.

"The question comes down to this: what will you say to that next generation about what you did to make sure that wouldn't be their fate?" she said.