STAFF: The following is an unrehearsed interview with Iowa
Senator Chuck Grassley speaking to you live from Washington.
Participating in today's public affairs program are Chuck Shockley
with KLGA Radio in Algona and Sara Konrad with the Iowa Falls Times
Citizen in Iowa Falls.
The first question will be from Chuck Shockley.
QUESTION: Good morning, Senator.
Give us some remarks about your visit with President Obama, your
private visit with the president.
GRASSLEY: Very worthwhile meeting. We talked mostly about
health care reform. Vice President Biden was there and Senator
Baucus, my Democratic counterpart, was there. I brought up some Ag-
EPA issues that I won't go into unless you ask me about them.
Most of the process -- or most of the -- by the way, I had the
best hamburger you can get. They ate more rationally than I did and
more in a nutritious way, but when I get a chance to get a hamburger,
I'm going to have a hamburger.
Anyway, most of it was not on the substance of health care reform
but the process. And my goal to go there was to plead not to have
this done by reconciliation which is a process by which things are
done in a partisan way in the Senate. But it needs to be done by what
the Senate calls regular order which means, basically, doing things
bipartisan way because Senator Baucus and I work so closely together
that we need to -- we need to continue that process not just for
health care reform but what we're doing when you affect health care in
its entirety is 16 percent of the gross national product, and it
affects every family in the United States.
And when we do something that sweeping, it should be done in kind
of a consensus way, and a partisan way is not a consensus way.
And so I think I left the White House assured that the president
wants to have it done in regular order.
You want to go ahead, Sara?
QUESTION: Yes. Senator, I'm going to go ahead and ask about the
Ag-EPA issue that you said you wouldn't answer unless we asked about
it.
GRASSLEY: OK.
QUESTION: We're home to a biodiesel plant here in Iowa Falls. I
just wonder -- I wanted to get your reaction to the EPA study that
released this week about -- that says a lot of biodiesel plans are
not...
GRASSLEY: Now, that was -- that was one of the four issues I
brought up but not just in regard to your plant.
QUESTION: No, no.
GRASSLEY: It's in regard to this indirect land use that is now
being pushed as a factor in determining whether ethanol is
environmentally positive or negative. And with being included
dependent on how they use it, but right now I think it's very
detrimental to ethanol.
And why, after 30 years, when everything was considered good,
good, good including environmental issues that it was good, now are we
having this raised? Well, big oil is taking on ethanol once again.
And this is the way they're doing it through a factor of indirect land
use.
And I brought it up with him and I explained it this way. How
ridiculous it is for EPA to think that there's some farmer down there
in Brazil just waiting to -- to see whether Chuck Grassley sends more
corn for ethanol instead of for food, that he's going to plow up
another acre of land. You know, that's not real.
But even if it were real, it's very irrational to think in terms
of Iowa farmers being penalized for something that's going on in
Brazil that we have absolutely no control over. So that's one issue.
The other issue is, you know, cows do poop. And there's this tax
of $178 on dairy cows if they put it in place. And I explained how
farmers are getting $9 for milk now. The cost of production is $13.
That we won't have any dairy if you started taxing cows.
The third one was this view -- see, environmentalists are trying
to regulate agriculture to a greater extent. So it's pretty hard to
regulate under the Clean Water Act because the Clean Water Act only
applies to what we call point source pollution. In other words,
something coming out of a pipe.
Well, runoff from a farm is not -- it's called nonsource point
pollution. Well now, they're trying to get at farmers through the
nozzle of a sprayer being a point source of pollution and trying to
regulate herbicide spraying and that. So I brought that up to him.
And the last one was fugitive dust. And he immediately asked
well, what is fugitive dust. So I explained that EPA says you're
supposed to keep any of the dust that blows from your farming
operation within your property line. So I explained it this way.
Only God determines when the wind blows. Only God determines
when soy beans have 13 percent moisture and you have to combine it.
And when you combine, dust happens. And how ridiculous it is.
Well, he took notes of everything I said and he said he'd get
back to me.
GRASSLEY: OK.
QUESTION: Senator, you co-sponsored a joint resolution that
would amend the U.S. Constitution to prohibit the physical desecration
of the American flag. Could you expound on that a little bit?
GRASSLEY: Yes. There was a Supreme Court decision several years
ago, and we've been trying to amend the Constitution ever since.
We've come within one vote of getting the two-thirds vote to go. But
the Supreme Court ruled five to four a few years ago that burning a
flag was an expression of free speech and was protected by the
Constitution.
We think that burning a flag is desecration of the flag and that
we should not desecrate the flag that there's been a lot of bloodshed
by our veterans and people in uniform to protect the flag as a symbol
of our country.
So it simply says that desecration of a flag is not protected by
the First Amendment because the First Amendment was not written -- if
you read the debate in 1790 -- the First Amendment was not written to
protect nonverbal speech. It was to protect verbal speech and, more
importantly, political speech.
So you weren't put in jail when you talked against the government
as you were in England that the particular time. And so we want to
make sure that we get the Constitution back to its original intent
before the Supreme Court screwed it up.
QUESTION: OK. Is there any hope -- I think maybe I heard that
you had addressed this issue -- that hog farmers might be getting any
subsidies for money they may have lost due to the H1N1?
GRASSLEY: Well, I didn't address that only from this point. A
person -- a journalist like you, maybe two or three days ago asked me
that same question. And my answer was that I did not think that we
would be doing it because, for instance when we had mad cow disease
and beef producers lost a lot of money four or five years ago when we
had that in the United States, that we didn't do it. And I wouldn't
advise doing it now.
I'd be glad to consider it if there's such an application made,
but I think it would be unfair to people that had previous losses
from, in a sense, political decisions that are made and that political
is to call it swine flu in the first place. It ought to be called, as
you did, by this scientific name. And then we wouldn't have lost a
lot of money because people would still be continuing to eat pork.
Back to Chuck?
QUESTION: Could you talk very quickly about the bipartisan
legislation that you introduced with Senator Hagan in regard to the
African-American farmers who successfully filed claims as a result of
2008 Farm Bill?
GRASSLEY: Yes. Well, I've got to go back to the Farm Bill where
we really dealt with this the first time and then tell you what we're
trying to do with this legislation because the Farm Bill is a real
breakthrough here.
If you go back 10 or 12 years, African-American farmers had not
been treated right by the Department of Agriculture. They had an
opportunity to go to court, and some of them did go to court and get a
settlement. But the way it was handled of notifying farmers of their
rights, a lot of African-American farmers were denied access to the
courts.
Now, would they have recovered if they had access to the courts?
Well, that's up to the court. I can't answer that decision. But they
were kept out through some bureaucratic screw-ups. And so what we did
if the Farm Bill a year ago is just simply open the courts up again so
if they want to go to court, they can go to court.
If they go to court will they get money or not? Well, we put in
$100 million in the Farm Bill if they did. But if very many of them
get settlement, that $100 million isn't going to go very far. So what
the bill that I put in with Senator Hagan, the new senator from North
Carolina, and she's an outstanding senator, was simply to allow more
money, if there's more than $100 million that needs to be expended --
assuming that they got a good case in court.
Thank you, Chuck and Sara, for participating in today's public
affairs program. This has been Senator Chuck Grassley reporting to
the people of Iowa.
Thanks to each of you.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Thank you so much.