STAFF: The following is an unrehearsed interview with Iowa
Senator Chuck Grassley speaking to you live from Iowa City.
Participating in today's public affairs program are Glenn Kiss with
KIOW Radio in Forest City and Mike Leckband with the Cherokee
Chronicle Times in Cherokee.
The first question with be from Glenn Kiss.
QUESTION: Once again, Senator Grassley, it's always an honor to
speak with you.
Now that Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate do you see a
change in the Republican Party's approach to furthering its agenda?
GRASSLEY: Well, I think that there is a moderating influence on
the fact that the Democrats now have 60 for the first time. Let's
say, the first time since 1976, at least.
And that is the fact that there's a group of Democrats that call
themselves "moderate Democrats" led by Senator Bayh of Indiana. And
the extent to which they're questioning some of the things of their
own president, our president, they -- they could be working with some
Republicans to make sure that the 60-vote threshold isn't always
successful.
And, as a result, then the Senate does what constitutionally it's
supposed today, and that's to bring moderation to legislation that
presumably would be in the extreme as passed by the House of
Representatives. That's our constitutional function for the last 225
years.
On the other hand, until Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd, who
have been off sick for several weeks, get back to the Senate, you
know, then they won't have the 60 votes anyway. So from that
standpoint, the immediate impact of his winning the election through
the court decision may not be different. But it could under the
circumstances I just spoke about, the extent to which 60 Democrats
stick together.
QUESTION: You mentioned two senators out ill. Is a vote in
absentia against Senate rules?
GRASSLEY: Yes. You have to be on the floor of the Senate to
cast your vote.
QUESTION: OK. Thank you.
QUESTION: OK. Good morning, Senator. This is Mike Leckband at
the Chronicle Times.
GRASSLEY: Yes, go ahead.
QUESTION: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing
health care reform right now? And why don't you personally support a
government-run health care system?
GRASSLEY: Yes. Well, I don't support a government-run health
care system because our neighbor to the north has one, and there's
rationing, you know. A lot of people come to the United States for
health care. I think primary care in Canada is very good, but when
you have to have, you know, major surgery, thing of that nature or
even an MRI and you've got to wait three months to get it -- if you
got a headache, you think you've got a brain tumor, you don't want to
wait three months to find out. That's why you have a lot of people
coming to the United States.
And if the United States would go that direction, then I think
that, you know, where's -- where are we going to go if we need
additional health care if ours would deteriorate to the point that it
is in Canada? And so I think that we have a very good health care
system. We have problems. It's too expensive. Insurance is too
expensive. Too many people don't have insurance.
But if we end up with making sure that the 50 million people that
don't have health insurance get health insurance, and we do away with
the discrimination of pre-existing conditions, and through community
rating it can be affordable, it seems to me when you get everybody
insured and it's affordable, that we've accomplished the goal that
having the government run it to a greater extent would no longer be a
problem.
QUESTION: Thank you.
STAFF: Back to you, Glenn.
QUESTION: Thank you.
Senator Grassley, the economy continues to struggle. And here in
North Iowa, we've been hit very hard. Winnebago Industry is laying
off well over a thousand.
On June 23rd, the Department of Labor announced a $469,000 grant
for 60 workers laid off in Marshalltown. Can't resources like that be
better used to help larger numbers of people laid off in towns like
Forest City at Winnebago Industries?
GRASSLEY: Well, listen, everybody laid off qualifies for
unemployment compensation, and you don't get any announcement of a
program especially for people that are just laid off, assuming they're
going to be hired back. When you have plant closings, then there are
special programs set up to help people -- to help people get retrained
and have transition income from one job to another.
GRASSLEY: And so you've got those programs that kick in and
they're kind of special compared to just normal unemployment
compensation. But those would be available under those circumstances
of that law. And the second one would be any jobs that are lost
because of -- of trade treaties that we have -- free-trade agreements
and imports coming into the country, the extent to which there's
layoffs because of that, and that, most normally, would apply to plant
closings as well.
Then, there's a special program that trigger in as trade
adjustment assistance. And we just expanded that program. So I
wonder if it's a case that you're asking about -- if it's not -- those
programs are already available if people qualify for them.
QUESTION: Perhaps. But if there's anything you can do for
Winnebago Industries and the people of Forest City, we would
appreciate it.
GRASSLEY: Oh, well, listen, you don't even have to ask me to do
that. Well, you might have to ask me from this standpoint that I
might not know what the specific need is in a specific community of
Iowa. After all, we've got 900 of them. But the extent to which I'm
aware of it, I will be glad to contact the Department of Labor to help
those programs be kicked in.
QUESTION: People here would be grateful.
GRASSLEY: Yes.
STAFF: Back to you, Mike.
QUESTION: OK. Senator, what would you like to see for the
Senate's agenda until the second part of the year?
GRASSLEY: Well, I want to finish health care reform if we can,
if we can do it in a bipartisan way and not screw everything up for
our health care system. But we've got to be cautious as we do it
because, you know, we aren't just affecting health care. We're
actually restructuring about one-sixth of our economy. And that's why
I say it ought to be bipartisan because we ought to have a consensus
when you do something that gigantic.
I want to see all the rest of the appropriation bills passed. I
want to see some things in the area of -- of our defense
reauthorization. I want to see trade agreements with Panama,
Colombia, and North Korea -- or, I mean, South Korea passed yet
because those have been negotiated a long period of time, and they
will really help our economy because, presently, we're paying high
tariffs to get our products into those countries. And with the free-
trade agreement, we'll be able to export more and be more competitive
with other countries that have agreements with Colombia, Panama, and
Korea.
And then I'd like to see a reauthorization of the education
bills. And I think that that's pretty much a full agenda for now till
the rest of the year.
QUESTION: OK. Thank you.
STAFF: Back to you, Glenn.
QUESTION: Senator Grassley, what do you see as a future of the
Republican Party since the Christian right seems to be alienating some
moderate Republicans, especially, the young?
GRASSLEY: Yes. Well, I think, first of all, we ought to realize
that whether you're a fiscal conservative Republican or a social
conservative Republican, that probably we agree on 90 percent of
everything and that only 10 percent is dividing us. And I think we
ought to follow a -- a -- we ought to follow an admonition of
President Reagan when he said to Republicans if I agree with somebody
80 percent of the time but 20 percent of the time we disagree, he's
not going to be our enemy.
And we need to adopt an approach of being civil to each other
within the Republican Party. Then that's the internal things that we
have to do. Now, we lost a lot of independent support in the 2006
election, and I think we continued to lose it in the 2008 election
because Republicans were in charge of Congress for 12 years.
GRASSLEY: And during that 12-year period of time, for most of
it, we did pretty good; '97 through 2001, we paid down $580 billion on
the national debt. But by the time you got to 2005 and 2006, it
looked to people like we were spending money like a drunken sailor.
And so they didn't believe we were sticking by our principles.
So a few Republicans and a lot of independents left support for
the Republican Party. And we have to show them that we're going to
stick by our principles, and we will become more powerful and get our
membership back as time goes on. But we've got to -- we've got to
show people we have principle, and we have to live by those
principles.
Now, I think since the first of the year in Obama's election,
we're starting to turn around because you're getting most every
Republican voted against -- voting against these big spending policies
in Washington, D.C. since Obama has wanted to triple the national debt
by one-third.
And maybe Obama himself is helping us to win back some of these
people because Obama's support among independents has fell
dramatically from 65 percent approval rating to 41 percent approval
rating. So he may be helping us. But we've got to show people, as
we're trying to do now this year, that we're going to be fiscal
conservatives.
STAFF: Thank you, Glenn and Mike, for participating in today's
public affairs program. This has been Senator Chuck Grassley
reporting to the people of Iowa.