STAFF: The following is an unrehearsed interview with Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, speaking to you live from Des Moines.
Participating in today's public affairs program are Glenn Kiss with KIOW in Forest City and Andy Karr with the Newton Daily News in Newton.
The first question will be from Glenn Kiss.
QUESTION: Thank you, Senator Grassley. It's always an honor to speak with you. And happy new year.
GRASSLEY: Happy new year to you too. And I hope the snow is not blowing too bad up there.
QUESTION: Thank you, but it is.
GRASSLEY: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
QUESTION: Is there anything you can do about that?
GRASSLEY: If I did, you wouldn't believe me.
(LAUGHTER)
QUESTION: Actually, since we're talking about snow -- and the heavy snow is here in North Iowa and elsewhere in the country -- is FEMA prepared or preparing the potential flooding come spring?
GRASSLEY: Well, the answer is yes, unless it be extraordinary. But I don't know how you can be much extraordinary on the testing the will and capability of FEMA than you did with Katrina, which was pretty messy and not very well handled. But later on other hurricanes were better handled.
And then, of course, we had the flash flood of June 2008 affecting 300 cities in eastern Iowa. And we remember maybe Cedar Rapids as the one that sticks in your mind most often that was so devastated.
And at least the emergency part of it seemed to be handled well. We still have situations for a buyouts and -- and plans of the Corps of Engineers to further rebuild and restructure flood control things that are not settled yet from those floods. But for the emergencies, the answer is yes.
And let's hope it's much better than the way the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security's willing to be on top of terrorists that could potentially kill 300 people when a plane goes down over the Atlantic Ocean.
QUESTION: Maybe if we have time we'll talk about that.
GRASSLEY: Yes.
QUESTION: Thank you.
STAFF: And to Andy?
QUESTION: Good morning, Senator.
GRASSLEY: Good morning.
QUESTION: A couple weeks ago Senator Harkin was touting an amendment to the health care bill that would increase the Medicare reimbursements to small rural hospitals like Skiff Medical Center here in Newton.
I'm wondering what your opinion is on that amendment.
GRASSLEY: Oh, my opinion on it is complete agreement with Senator Harkin. In fact, on the Senate Finance Committee, prior to the bill ever getting to the floor, I offered an amendment that was supposed to accomplish the very same thing, and worked it out with the Iowa Hospital Association for the hospitals that we call in-between hospitals -- or we call them "tweeners" for short.
And Newton and Grinnell are a couple of those hospitals out of nine in Iowa, and about 300 hospitals in the entire United States. But when we got to the floor with that bill, we realized that the language that the Iowa Hospital Association had given us was not really accomplishing what both of us thought it would accomplish.
So that's why Senator Harkin was able to rewrite that in a way that would meet the needs that I first thought we were trying to accomplish.
I've been working on the tweener hospital sort of thing going back to 2008. In fact, in a bipartisan Medicare bill early 2008, I had the tweener provisions in it. And then -- and that was a bipartisan bill. And then the Democrat majority decided to adopt the House bill instead of the Senate bill, and it didn't have the tweeners provisions in it.
And consequently, then, all the hard work that I'd put into the bipartisan bill to help the Newton hospital and Grinnell hospital was not in the bill the president signed.
So finally I'm glad that we're able to do something for the nine hospitals in Iowa, including Newton and Grinnell, and then the other some 300 hospitals -- or maybe 280 hospitals in the rest of the country.
STAFF: Back to Glenn?
QUESTION: Thank you.
Well, following up, in all seriousness, Senator, why can't the American people have the same health care plan that the Senate and Congress have, and then we'd just be done with it?
GRASSLEY: I'm glad you asked me that, because it gives me another opportunity to tell of a very active provision that I put in in the Senate Finance Committee, and -- and now it's retained in the bill that went through the United States Senate.
And I picked this up from my town meetings last year in Iowa, because people at my town meetings asked you -- just exactly the same question that you just now asked. And I was able to get an amendment in the Senate finance bill. And it -- a similar one was finally passed in the Senate floor on Christmas Eve that would have what we would allow any -- members of Congress and our staffs would have to use the same exchange that other people in the United States would use to buy insurance, health insurance.
QUESTION: OK.
STAFF: Back to Andy?
QUESTION: Switching gears a little bit here, Senator. I saw earlier this week that you had asked for full accounting on the cash-for-clunkers program.
GRASSLEY: Yes.
QUESTION: Do you believe that there were abuses in that program? And then overall, what's your assessment of how the program worked?
GRASSLEY: OK. It did sell cars. Did it sell cars that would otherwise not have been sold? Or maybe it gave people an incentive to buy a new car that wouldn't have otherwise bought cars? And people that maybe didn't need the incentive to buy a car, but the incentive -- and they wouldn't have bought a car without the incentive, and they went ahead and bought a car that maybe they would have continued to drive an older car.
But it did enhance sales. So I guess you'd say it was a success.
Was it a success for the amount of money that it cost the taxpayers not going into the federal Treasury? I guess the jury would still be out on that.
I think that there is some fraud and abuse. I think that there was even questions about that before we renewed it for a longer period of time, as we did, you know.
But my inquiry is going after the cost of administering the program, and particularly trying to get a handle on contractors that were hired outside of government employment to carry it out.
I want to know what it cost to administer the program, so that if we do something like that in the future we know whether we spent our money administering the program was spent well.
STAFF: Back to Glenn?
QUESTION: OK, a little bit of homeland security, Senator. I hesitate to use the word "terrorist" because it just gives too much power to what's no more than a bunch of cowards. And that having been said, but doesn't it seem when it comes to airport security that these cowards actually have less scrambling, and on the run?
GRASSLEY: Well, the answer is yes. But I would encourage you to use the word "terrorist" because this is not just an individual person like down in -- in Oklahoma City 10 years ago that killed 100 and some Americans when -- when that bomb went off. That was a person kind of acting on his own, not in conjunction with other people.
And the reason why you ought to use the word "terrorist," although both activities are terrorist, whether it's September the 11th or whether it's Oklahoma City -- we are up against an extreme group of jihadists who are out to conquer Western civilization. And if they can't actually conquer us, they are out to bring all sorts of psychological trauma and economic trauma and social trauma against the American people and the people of Europe, or Western civilization as I would call it.
And it's a very concerted effort. And it's -- to some of those people, it's religious based, not just political.
And -- and even the most devout Muslim would -- would renounce this sort of criminal activity, but it's out there and we have to deal with it. And we ought to not back down on using "war on terrorism."
But it is a threat to us, and it's a reminder that we all have to be -- we all have to be vigilant, because it can happen to us. We need to be vigilant like that person that was a few seats away that attacked the guy so he couldn't carry out his dastardly act.
STAFF: Thank you, Glenn and Andy, for participating in today's public affairs program.
This has been Senator Chuck Grassley reporting to the people of Iowa.
GRASSLEY: Thank you both...
QUESTION: Thank you, Senator.
QUESTION: Thanks very much, Senator.
GRASSLEY: ... thank you both very much for participating.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: My pleasure. My pleasure always.
END