Bachmann Hopes to Team with Ellison on Medicaid Reform

Update: Ellison said he "looks forward to working with Rep. Bachmann." More .

Less than two weeks after she questioned her fellow Minnesota U.S. Representative's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Rep. Michele Bachmann announced Monday in St. Michael that she's hoping to team up with Rep. Keith Ellison on Medicaid reform. 

In a meeting with St. Michael business owners, Bachmann said she was looking to do bi-partisan work to end Medicaid fraud.

"Minnesota is the poster child for Medicaid fraud. If we're going to have a system, we need a system that works for the poor. Right now, it's not working. I've been in communication with Rep. Ellison and hope to work with him on this issue," she said. 

Bachmann added that the reform would largely help more people in Ellison's district, but would assist people in hers. 

"If it helps him more, who cares? It's broken and it needs to be fixed," she said. 

Earlier in July, Bachmann questioned Ellison's ties with various Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, on the Glenn Beck Show. She stated the Inspectors General of the National Intelligence Committee had every right to investigate people "like" Ellison and their ties to various groups. 

"Well, he [Ellison] has a long record of being associated with CAIR and with the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR is an unindicted co‑conspirator, as stated in the large terrorist financing case that we’ve had in the United States of America and so he came out and essentially wanted to shut down the inspectors general from even looking into any of the questions that we were asking." 

Ellison vehmently denied the charge, and said Bachmann should apologize for the allegations, not to him, but to others. At the center of the controversy was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin.  

"It's the worst of 'guilt by association,'" Ellison told CNN's Anderson Cooper on July 20. 

Bachmann said she has "high respect" for Rep. Ellison, and enjoys a "working relationship" with Congress' only elected Muslim. 

But Ellison continued to press Bachmann about her comments in a Washington Post opinion piece Satuday—saying it was good to see so many people rebuke her for the allegations.

"When religious or ethnic intolerance arises from the miry quicksand of hateful thinking we should respond," he wrote. "This broad and swift public rebuke of fear-mongering and guilt by association is refreshing and should give us hope."