Michele Bachmann bids Congress farewell

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Tuesday said goodbye to Congress after four terms and a run for president.

“It has been the privilege and the honor of a lifetime,” Bachmann said in her final House floor speech.

{mosads}Bachmann, who ran for president in 2012 and was the first woman to win the Ames, Iowa, straw poll, will leave Congress with one less conservative firebrand.

She became a household name in recent years for founding the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, and for her fierce opposition to ObamaCare and illegal immigration.

Bachmann thanked her constituents, noting they made her the first Republican woman to represent Minnesota in Congress.

“I was a nobody from nowhere,” Bachmann said of when she first ran for the House in 2006.

After thanking her family, Bachmann expressed gratitude to her staff, including her communications director Dan Kotman to “keep me from making mistakes that I’m all too prone to make.”

Before signing off, Bachmann expressed gratitude for the institution.

“More than anything, I want to say thank you to the founders of this nation,” Bachmann said. “It is our job not to think only of our themselves, but to think of the generations that are yet to come.”

“Thank you for the privilege, and I yield back,” Bachmann concluded.