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 Mike Peterson with KMA Radio in Shenandoah and Steve Woodhouse with the Knoxville Journal Express in Knoxville.
The first question will be from Mike Peterson.
QUESTION: Senator, most people know that you are among the six members of Congress who have been negotiating on a health care reform bill. Specifically, what sort of measures would you like to see in a health care reform bill before you would approve of any such measure?
GRASSLEY: Well, I think your question has an understanding that about 10 days ago the group of six quit negotiating. We were, kind of, shoved aside, not by Senator Baucus, the chairman of the committee, but by people higher up than him, probably people in the White House and the Democratic leadership.
They probably didn't like what he was negotiating for Democrats, anyway, and -- and they were anxious to get started. Seemed more interested in getting it done right now, than getting it done right, whereas I think the group of six, including all three of the Democrats, were interested in doing it right in the first place, instead of right now.
And so, we, kind of, have split amicably. I guess you'd say we've been pushed aside amicably. There was never a harsh word said.
So let me answer your question then, based upon what the situation is right now, because as we talk, we're in the middle of three or four days of debating the bill within committee.
And one -- and maybe the most important would be what we call an individual mandate, a tax on people that don't buy health insurance. And the rationale for it is kind of like having car insurance, you know. But health insurance is very, very expensive. And this would be a penalty of $3,800 on a family of four, $900 for an individual.
Quite a steep tax for people that maybe don't pay a tax. And consequently, just something that we cannot go along with, particularly because I had an alternative that would have set up a reinsurance program that would have helped take care of most of this and leave it on a voluntary basis people buying insurance if they could afford it.
Another thing was not nailing down that -- and I don't want to say we disagree on illegal immigrants, I think both Republicans and Democrats don't want them to get it, but I think we found on the Democrat side not willing to go far enough with enforcement.
Another one was that nobody wanted to change the present restrictions against funding abortion, but the Democrats weren't willing to go far enough to make sure that the subsidy through the tax credit was not used to finance abortions, like money out of the federal treasury because of the Hyde amendment can't be used.
And things of that nature have kept us apart. I'd say it's probably down to a half a dozen things that keep us apart, but they're probably 50 percent of all the controversy we've been dealing with.
QUESTION: And so with everything that the federal government is working on right now, can it really take on another huge portion of the economy, and really should it take on this portion of the economy, given our Constitution that doesn't really guarantee anybody health care or anything else like that?
GRASSLEY: Well, you know, I wish there was a strong basis for that constitutional argument, and I'm not -- or that constitutional point you made. And I'm not going to try to counteract it, because, strictly speaking, it's not in the Constitution.
And, on the other hand, we've had Medicare for 40 years and I presume the courts have upheld Medicare; maybe more so with the individual mandate than with what we're doing through a government program would be what you're saying.
But let's -- I don't want to forget the constitutional argument, because they're legitimate. But also I think the other part of your question is more -- is very current as well, and that is that: Can we afford it?
And I would say that the people that came to my town meetings came to the conclusion you could not afford it. But then, on the other hand, at the time of the August town meetings, the bills that were out there were increasing the deficit by a trillion dollars, and they weren't doing anything about health costs inflation, whereas the bill -- even the partisan bill that Senator Baucus brought out, is -- doesn't add anything to the deficit.
It is, in fact, a $900 trillion bill -- $900 billion bill. But it is paid for. And it is -- does attempt, I think in a very sincere way, to do something about inflation.
So it is better, from that standpoint. But you could still raise the issue of whether or not you ought to be increasing taxes and cutting Medicare at a time when -- when this -- when we're in depression and things of that nature.
So I -- I -- it's -- I didn't list it as one of the three or four reasons why we couldn't get a bipartisan agreement, but it is -- particularly when you're taking money from Medicare, as you'll see my votes yesterday on some amendments that were offered about Medicare, you can see that I think that it's the wrong thing to be doing.
QUESTION: Shifting gears, Senator, to another topic, there's been a lot of discussion about the activities of the group called ACORN, and some members of Congress -- some Republican members -- are pushing for a congressional investigation into this organization.
What are your concerns about ACORN? And do you think it is -- should be a priority of Congress to look into this organization?
GRASSLEY: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I signed a letter to the leader asking for such an investigation. And five or six times -- the first four were probably not very productive -- I voted against funding ACORN.
Now, the last two times we voted overwhelmingly because of the recent TV display about ACORN. They have been denied funding under the last couple of appropriation bills. And I'll continue to vote that way.
I've been concerned about ACORN going back two or three years to my investigation of -- maybe four years -- my investigation of nonprofits. And I've accumulated a lot of information, but that information comes from private income tax, and under the privacy rule, Section 6301, I can't make public any of that information.
But I've been investigating ACORN for that period of time.
QUESTION: And, kind of, shifting gears again, is there much of a future for the family farmer, you believe? I mean, with the situation we're in and the fact that overseas farming is becoming easier and more modern, do you really see much hope for the Iowa family farmer?
GRASSLEY: The answer is yes. For the American family farmer and the productivity that comes from the institution of the family farm, it is a very, very good future.
And the competition from overseas is -- their productivity being increased is needed because we're going to end up here in 50 years with 9 million people on the face of the Earth. That's a 50 percent increase. That's a lot of mouths to feed. And there's a lot of natural resources around the world that people can use to produce food, and they're going to have to produce it or we're going to have starvation.
And I think we can meet it without putting any more land into production, at least in the United States, because I think we're going to increase productivity -- in other words, yields -- from year to year as you've seen a very steady increase in yields just in the last 10 years. And there are still -- still a great deal of hope by our -- our state universities that that can continue.
So I think what you need to look at is that if you don't have the family farm or the family provides the labor, maybe even hire -- hire some labor and manage their own -- make their own management decisions and control their own capital, you know, you're going to end up with a corporate thing where somebody else is putting up the money, they hire the management, the management hires the labor, and you don't have integration enough to get massive productivity -- that'll come from the concerns that families have about their own family operation and where they control things from beginning to end.
STAFF: Thank you, Mike and Steve, for participating in today's public affairs program.
This has been Senator Chuck Grassley reporting to the people of Iowa.
GRASSLEY: Thank you very much every one of you.
QUESTION: All right, thanks a lot, Senator.
GRASSLEY: Goodbye.