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 Scott Jackson with KMCD Radio in Fairfield and Randy Cauthron with the Spencer Daily Reporter in Spencer. The first question will be from Scott Jackson.
JACKSON: Thanks for joining us today, Senator.
GRASSLEY: Thank you for being with us.
JACKSON: My pleasure. I was -- I guess my first -- the first question I'd have to ask is, around here in southeast Iowa, of course, one of our big stories here of this week was an appointment of a new FSA director here in the state, an area representative in John Whitaker. And I didn't know if you had worked at all with John, but I didn't know if you had any thoughts on -- on that appointment that was made this week.
GRASSLEY: I think it's a very, very good appointment. And I don't think John would be surprised to have a Republican say that about a Democrat legislator being appointed to that.
But I've known him in two different lives, number one, when he was president of the Iowa Farmers Union. And I think that would probably be about 10 years and probably up until about four years, I think, he held that position. He was a very good farm leader of that organization.
And I've known -- even though I'm a Farm Bureau member and not a Farmers Union member, I've always had good relationships with Farmer Union members. Prior to him, a Mr. Lam and Mr. Whitaker and now Mr. Peterson from -- from Mason City. So I -- I really interacted more with him in that capacity than I have been since he's been in the state legislature. But I have a grandson in the state legislature, and he speaks very highly of -- of the gentleman. So I think that the president made a good appointment. And maybe I said the president made a good appointment. It was probably Secretary Vilsack that actually made the final selection, but it's a good one.
OK, Randy?
CAUTHRON: You bet, Senator. Good to talk to you this morning.
GRASSLEY: Yes, thank you.
CAUTHRON: Last night, President Obama had his talk on the health care situation. I know that there is pressure to get a bill passed here in the next coming weeks, trying to get things done.
What is your philosophy regarding this particular bill? Is it a good bill? Do we know enough about it? And is this really the direction the country needs to take in terms of getting involved in the private industry of medicine?
GRASSLEY: Yes, well, one of my goals is to make sure we don't have the federal government take over health care. And I'll tell you about my activities in one of these venues. But you want to remember that there are three venues. There's two bills out. There's a Pelosi bill out, and then
there's Senator Kennedy's bill out. These are both out of committees. And both of those are tending in that direction of having more government takeover of -- of health insurance and health care. And I'm not for that. And so I'm still working on the third venue. And I wasn't a part of the other two. So I'm only a part of the one coming out of the Finance Committee. I'm working with Senator Baucus, who's a Democrat. And there's three Republicans and three Democrats that are negotiating the bill. And one of the things that really would lead to a government takeover that we have been able to stop in the Senate Finance Committee -- and then, of course, the question comes, will we be able to, when it's merged with the other two proposals, will we be able to hold our ground on this issue? But this is an issue of a government-run health insurance company. And we feel that that's going to lead us to a government takeover of health insurance, because the government is not a competitor. A government is a predator. And from that standpoint, with the power to tax, the power to destroy, we have think-tanks in town here, like the Lewin Group, as an example, and I think they're respected for their health care research, they say 120 million people will go into that government program. Well, then that's going to destroy private health insurance for everybody else, because you've got a smaller pool left over, and pretty soon premiums will go up, and pretty soon other people get into the government-run program, and pretty soon you have the government running everything, like it is in Canada. And there's denial and delay of care in Canada. And you have a situation where -- just one example. You've got to wait three months to get an MRI. I could go anywheres in the state of Iowa and get an MRI tomorrow, if I needed one. And so if you've got a headache, you don't want to wait three months to find out if you've got a brain tumor, so that's why a lot of people come to the United States for health care. So I could address a lot more about health care reform, but the one question you asked -- should the government be taking over more of our health care reform? No. But it would happen under the Pelosi bill. It would happen under the Kennedy bill. And I don't think it's going to happen under the Baucus-Grassley bill. It is assuming we reach a
final agreement on everything that's in it, and I've only talked about probably 5 percent of the -- of the -- of the issues that are involved with it.
CAUTHRON: Thank you.
GRASSLEY: Back to Scott?
JACKSON: All right, Senator Grassley. I know you've got -- kind of listened to some of the news today, seeing some more positive news coming out about the economy. I know there have been a few words tossed around as far as, you know, turnaround, but what -- what are you seeing today from -- from the news of, you know, the economic possibilities of turnarounds here coming...
GRASSLEY: Well, we -- we may be turning around and may have turned around already, but I believe we're going to be in what you might call a trough. You know, you can have a V-shaped or U-shaped recovery, recession, recovery or you can have kind of a trough, so we're -- we're coming out of it, but we're coming out of it very slowly. I expect that we're going to have growth before the end of the year, unlike the last seven or eight quarters we haven't had any growth -- I should say about five quarters we haven't had any growth -- and we're going to have slow growth for quite a few quarters. And, of course, the most important measure of recovery is when you've got low unemployment. And I think we're going to have some high unemployment for a period of time. It could -- in a couple of months, it could be at 10 percent. I expect it'll go down a little bit next year, but go down very slowly, because unemployment improvement is the
last thing to correct itself after we are in a recession.
Randy, go ahead.
CAUTHRON: Senator -- you bet. Last night at the end of the -- the president's, I guess, telecast, if you want to call it that, he addressed an issue that happened in Connecticut regarding an officer and an arrest of a -- a gentleman that he knew. In particular, there was questions about racial issues there. And the president made a comment to the effect of calling it stupid behavior, essentially, on behalf of law enforcement. Do you think people at your level, at the federal level, should be in a position making comments on events that take place in local communities that they may not have all of the knowledge about before they speak on it?
GRASSLEY: I would be hesitant to make comments on something that I didn't know all the facts, and I would hedge very much, and I would give deference to people that are on the spot.
Now, a lot of times you find out, yes, there was really a big mistake made. But I think that -- that, too often, we're trying to second-guess law enforcement when we aren't there, and you've got to make a very quick decision. We're fortunate that -- that, in the last 25 years, law enforcement people have had to have good law enforcement training, so you have a lot less of those mistakes, but you still have mistakes. And -- but I do think that you have to have some deference to law enforcement until you know that they, in fact, have made what is termed a stupid mistake.
Back to Scott.
JACKSON: Senator, I was going to ask you quickly here -- I know, you know, one of the other things in our neck of the woods down here in southern Iowa, a kind of -- a kind of a more lighter topic, I suppose -- is, obviously, we've got Ragbrai rolling in here this week. And I know we're doing a lot down here for -- for that. I know, you know, I guess, if you could speak a little bit about that big event. We've got an estimated 15,000 bikers coming in to different communities here throughout southern Iowa. And, you know, we kind of talked about there about the economy. I'm sure that Ragbrai is becoming one of the much-needed infusions of economic boost for many of these different communities.
GRASSLEY: Well, probably after -- and I imagine this is the 36th, 37th or 38th Ragbrai, I'll bet. And I'll bet, after five Ragbrais since then, it's had an international reputation. You know, people come from all over the world to ride in it. And anybody that's a biker knows all about it. And -- and it's really given Iowa a good reputation. And I wish some time I have an opportunity to do it, but unless it's in the month of August, I'll never get that opportunity. And I don't know whether I'd have patience enough to do the training I would need to do it, but I would surely enjoy it.
Thank you, Scott and Randy, for participating in today's public affairs program. This has been Senator Chuck Grassley reporting to the people of Iowa. For a second time, thanks to all of you.