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Lions question Grassley; Senator criticizes Obama with some answers
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · July 11, 2014


Announcing a “Lions Town Meeting,” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley on July 2 fielded questions on illegal immigration, medical school debt, energy independence, mental health care in light of mass shootings, and more.


Grassley, R-Iowa, addressed about 40 in attendance at the regularly scheduled Lions Club summer meeting in the basement of Community State Bank, sharing his position on those issues and criticizing President Obama on issues like border patrol, enforcement of the Affordable Care Act and environmental issues.

Lions Club member and Hoover Presidential Foundation Executive Director Jerry Fleagle presented Grassley with a pin of the 31st president and one of the newly released $1 coins with Hoover’s picture.

“Don’t put that in a pop machine,” Lions Club President Mike Quinlan quipped.

When the question-and-answer session began, the first question asked about illegal immigrant children crossing the border.

Grassley said a bill was conceived to “shut off the sieve” and he tried to include language that would allow law enforcement to check identities by verifying if they had Social Security numbers, but that language was removed. Another idea was using fingerprinting or iris-identification systems with anyone who enters the United States with a visa.

“Half the people who are here illegally overstayed their visa,” he said.

A follow-up question asked what it would take to get Obama to enforce border laws better.

“I’m not sure he wants to,” Grassley responded, though he added that Congress more than doubled the number of border patrols since 9-11.

Asked about medical school debt keeping young doctors out of small towns, Grassley said there is a National Health Service Corps that sends doctors to underserved areas in exchange for credits against their school loans.

However, he would like colleges and universities to change the way they counsel students on taking out loans, too. He said most show the students how much they can borrow, while they should explain the actual cost of education.

Grassley said the few colleges which do counsel students on what they need — like University of Northern Iowa and Grand View College — show students graduating with an average of $13,000 less debt than others.

Grassley also suggests colleges figure out the ratio of what it costs to attend their school to what the student will pay, in monthly installments, when they graduate “so they will know if they can pay it off.”

A woman in the audience said she looked into putting solar panels on her roof to help her family rely less on coal and oil, but found them to be so expensive that “I wouldn’t live long enough to pay it off.”

Grassley said he was unsure about credits for solar panels, but then switched to talking about the wind energy tax credit which he created 22 years ago that still exists today.

“I’d be glad to consider that,” he said about a similar credit for solar panels on homes.

One question asked if Grassley could see a clear frontrunner emerging for the Republicans in the next presidential campaign. The senator said there are 10 to 12 candidates being seriously discussed now, but “the public is so anti-Washington that it would be better to choose a governor” to run.

He said he does not have a candidate in mind, but hopes the field will narrow to four or five within the next year.

On mental health care in light of recent mass shootings, Grassley said it is important to focus on mental health as it relates to violence, and the shortage of mental health care providers.

He said today there seems to be more of an emphasis on “heart over head” — that society is more interested in simply keeping people alive versus treating things like depression or antisocial behavior.

Also, there are personal rights to consider, the senator said. The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act extends privacy rights to medical records, he said, “and to get information into D.C. (for the purposes of preventing crimes) is a pretty sensitive thing.”

“We have not found a way to overcome privacy rights,” he said.

He said that of the six most recent mass killings, five involved people with mental health problems.

Grassley was asked about possible abolition of the Affordable Care Act, to which he said that some of what is called “Obamacare” is non-controversial, like medical malpractice reform, health savings accounts and covering pre-existing conditions.

“But the uproar is when government comes between you and your doctor,” he said.

The ACA created a 15-member board tasked with keeping the cost of health care to under 1 percent of the cost of living, Grassley noted, but said the approach leads to medical rationing.

“And we were told that if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance, and if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” the senator said, referring to President Obama. “Now we know that isn’t true.”

He criticized the Democratic president for changing or delaying enforcement of the ACA 38 times, and noted that Democratic Senator Tom Harkin told Obama that “you can’t do that,” referring to delaying the employer mandate.

“This is all driven from the White House,” he said.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new rules that would expand the Clean Water Act to include private property, Republicans have criticized the expansion, using the recent holiday to state that under the rules, environmentalists could sue to stop cities from setting off fireworks displays.

Grassley said the EPA has been given a massive amount of power, it is “difficult” for Congress to get it back, and that usually it takes a successful lawsuit for the EPA to “get its hand slapped a bit.”

“This is an anti-coal administration,” Grassley said, noting that if the administration thinks American can end the use of coal, “They’re dreaming.”

Talking to a reporter after the meeting, Grassley briefly commented on Supreme Court decisions on Hobby Lobby and union membership, as well as the Internal Revenue Service and lost e-mails.

Grassley said he agrees with the court’s 5-4 decision to allow Hobby Lobby to not provide four of the 20 contraceptive mandated by ACA because they, like the “morning-after pill,” are akin to causing abortions and company owners argued that is against their Christian religion. Hobby Lobby still offers coverage that includes contraceptives like condoms, birth control pills, vasectomies and sterilization surgeries.

“This strengthens freedom of religion,” the senator said. “It’s a pretty important part of the Bill of Rights.”

In the Supreme Court’s decision regarding unions, the court ruled 5-4 that in-home care workers in Illinois are not similar enough to government employees that they should be required to pay union dues, even if they are paid by the state.

Grassley said he agrees with the ruling because he advocates for Right-To-Work laws.

“If Illinois had Right-To-Work laws, there would be no case in the first place,” he said, adding that it is a “stretch” to call family members “government employees.”

As far as the IRS losing e-mails by Lois Lerner, former director of the division which oversaw tax-exempt groups, Grassley said he is skeptical the e-mails could go missing to the point technicians could not recover them.

“My perception is that (computer data) is backed up so much that nothing is ever lost,” he said.