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 Mike Hohenbrink with Independence Bulletin Review in Independence.
The first question will be from Chuck Shockley.
SHOCKLEY: Senator, you've sent letters to 31 hospitals on a nationwide basis asking about their experiences in implementing a $19 billion federal health information technology program launched last year. Could you comment about this a little bit?
GRASSLEY: Yes. There's two reasons for doing it. One is, $19 billion is a lot of money, and that's probably not all we're going to spend on it. Some hospitals have had some experience in information technology on their own initiative without federal law and without federal money.
And we want to know how it's going, learn from any mistakes that are being made, so when we continue to spend more money and expand this program, we know that -- that we can learn from the mistakes of the past.
The other one is to check to see on the wise use of money, and then I suppose I'd better add a third one, and probably a third one is as important as the first two, because we've had some questions about interoperability of various software and systems set up.
So if you're going to have a medical technology information system, so when you're in Algona in the -- in the summer and you need a doctor, but you're in, let's say, Arizona in the winter, and you have a different doctor down in Arizona, but you want full access by both doctors to whatever's done to you in the respective places, that that information is -- is available.
So it ought to be available wherever you are with whatever doctor or hospital you're involved in and that you give them permission to use this information to know more about you, how you've been treated elsewhere. So if it's not interoperable, that's a problem.
So we're just generally trying to be ahead of the curve as we get further into more medical information gathering and computerization of it.
Now, Independence?
HOHENBRINK: ... Senator, Massachusetts, what's the short-term impact going to be from the epic decision out there?
GRASSLEY: Yes, before I answer your question, did you have ice yesterday?
HOHENBRINK: Yes.
GRASSLEY: Real bad or just a little bit?
HOHENBRINK: At this point, we're getting used to it. We can tolerate it. We've had far worse this winter.
GRASSLEY: Did -- did it cause the electricity to go out?
HOHENBRINK: Not in this region, not the...
(CROSSTALK)
GRASSLEY: OK, yes. And tree branches didn't break off?
HOHENBRINK: Not anything serious.
GRASSLEY: OK, well, thank you.
Now to answer your question, I think, you know, there was some indication of game-playing if Brown won, and that would be that he wouldn't be seated until maybe the bill was brought up and passed and sent to the president. A Democratic senator yesterday put a stop to that by saying that he was not going to participate in voting for any bill until Senator Brown was seated.
And then the question came up, would the House pass the Senate bill and get it to the president so there wouldn't be a vote in the Senate even if Brown was seated and so it couldn't be stopped in the Senate? But Speaker Pelosi this morning announced she didn't have the votes to do that, consequently, wasn't going to do it.
So you get back to a position -- so this is the bottom-line answer to your question. I suppose I could speculate a lot, but I think since the Democrats decided to go with a partisan bill after three months of my being in a group of six, three Democrats and three Republicans, to negotiate a bipartisan bill and the rug was pulled out from under us by the White House and by the Democrat leadership, I think the ball is in the court of the Democrats to decide what they want to do.
But I hope that -- that this shows that what needs to be done in the future needs -- needs to be done in a bipartisan way and in a bipartisan way that's not just a handful of Republicans voting with Democrats, but something that satisfies a massive number of Republicans and a massive number of Democrats, so it's done on a content basis. And it's obviously not the bill that passed the Senate.
And so as far as substance, I'd just suggest one of many things that it would take to get it to be bipartisan, but one would be medical malpractice lawsuit reform, because that's not only going to reform a system that needs to be reformed, but it's probably going to save 10 percent of the money spent on health care because -- because doctors practice defensive medicine, because they think you're going to sue you, so they give you a bunch tests that maybe normally they wouldn't give you.
And 10 percent of all the money spent on health care today would have -- every year would amount to about $230 billion of savings. So that's one thing that needs to be done in order to get bipartisanship.
Back to Chuck.
SHOCKLEY: You welcome President Obama's interest in stopping tax-delinquent companies from getting federal contracts. In fact, your efforts in this regard go back almost eight years. Could you talk a little bit about tax-avoiding federal contractors a little bit for us?
GRASSLEY: Sure. People that aren't paying their taxes, just like government employees that don't file tax forms or pay all the taxes owed, you shouldn't be working for the federal government.
And so we are doing two things, one, trying to get a handle on that specific problem and, secondly, to get the IRS to do greater enforcement, and for those people that aren't paying taxes, not being able to do business with the federal government, contractors and subcontractors.
Mike?
HOHENBRINK: Senator, big news out here right now. It looks like the Census is going to end up costing Iowa seats in Congress. What -- kind of what's your view? How is this going to impact us down the road?
GRASSLEY: Well, in the House of Representatives, 4 out of 435 members isn't the same weight as 5 out of 435 members, so we're going to have a lesser voice in the U.S. House of Representatives by one member. And this will probably be the first time in, I think, 20 years, maybe 30 years, that we lost a seat, but now it's -- it's our turn.
And a few states in the South are going to pick up some seats and maybe South and Southwest. Other states maybe would lose more than Iowa, like Illinois, Pennsylvanian, New York, as an example.
So it swings the power in the House of Representatives from the Midwest-Northeast to the South and West, I guess you'd say, except include Florida in a state that would be positively impacted.
But the -- but you still have the same system of bicameralism, where the small states are represented in the United States Senate on an equal basis, and so we make up for it by Senator Harkin and Senator Grassley having to work harder into the future, I guess, is the best way to put it, but there's nothing you can do about it, because it's strictly mathematical.
Now back to Chuck?
SHOCKLEY: Do you have any update on your work to close the loophole allowing terrorists to stay in this country?
GRASSLEY: We -- I introduced a bill yesterday. You have this situation. You can have a person that shouldn't have been allowed in this country and got a visa, maybe because they were suspected of terrorist activity, but somebody overlooked it and they got here.
OK, that's the situation today. They're here. You decide they shouldn't have had a visa. You ought to immediately get them out of the country. Well, if they want to appeal to our court system, they have some rights under law.
And, basically, what my bill would do would be allow for immediate importation of somebody that shouldn't have got the visa in the first place and -- and remove them from the country without the protection of our courts.
Back to Mike.
HOHENBRINK: OK, Senator, with the presidential announcements, with the sending of American soldiers to Haiti, is there any risk that we're becoming overextended?
GRASSLEY: I don't think that we would be sending troops to Haiti if we were overextended for the reason that the number-one responsibility of the federal government is our national security. So if Afghanistan and Iraq were a problem, we could -- we could not have to do that. We wouldn't have to do it even now, but we want to do it because we're humanitarian-oriented. Also, they're in the Western Hemisphere, and also because a lot of Haitians, if we don't stabilize their country, could come here illegally, and they already have, by getting on these little boats and coming here.
We're trying to stop it for now, and I don't know that it's been a problem right now, but in past years, it has been a problem. So we want our military people to be there, to protect Americans that are doing humanitarian work, and to stop the chaos in the country, because there's not really much of a government there.
Thank you, Chuck and Mike, for participating in today's public affairs program. This has been Senator Chuck Grassley reporting to the people of Iowa.
Thank you both very much.
SHOCKLEY: Thanks, Senator. So long.
GRASSLEY: Bye-bye.
END