For Immediate Release
January 14, 2009

  

     GRASSLEY:  This week I am reintroducing my bill to establish an

independent watchdog over the federal judiciary.  There's an

inspectors general that works throughout the executive branch.  Some

are more effective than others.  And those who act independently and,

if they fully exercise their authority to expose program or management

shortcomings, they do it a tremendous amount of good for the taxpayers

in looking out for the public interest. 

 

     An inspector general for the federal judiciary could do good, and

I think as well as they do in the executive branch by bringing to

light problems and establishing accountability and credibility in that

branch.  Reports over recent years have highlighted problems with the

way the federal judiciary has handled complaints about judicial ethics

and misconduct.  So a little sunlight may do a lot of good. 

 

     I also plan to continue pursuit in the new Congress of my

legislative reform to allow cameras in the federal courtrooms.  I've

been at this so long in a bipartisan way with Senator Schumer you may

wonder, well, why don't we just drop it.  But it's so good on

principle, based on the fact that every state allows broadcast

coverage of their state court proceedings -- I should say almost every

state; I think 45 out of 50. 

 

     Federal courtrooms, which the Constitution makes open to the

public, haven't kept up with modern life by making themselves

effectively closed to the public by keeping news cameras out.  In

other words, with modern technology, we can make the constitutional

requirement, of courts being open to the public to more people. 

 

     I've been campaigning for camera access to the federal courts now

for a long time.  You might remember the Supreme Court released the

audio tapes in the contested 2000 presidential election.  That came in

response to my reform effort.  I hope to finally get legislation

passed and signed into law during the next two years.  The more

transparent the functions of government are, the better for

accountability and confidence in our system. 

 

     I'm ready for questions, and I'll start with Tom Beaumont.

 

     QUESTION:  Senator Grassley, did you expect to vote to release

the remainder of the TARP money? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Right now, no.  There is some talk about some

requirements put into it by a bill that's passing the House of

Representatives.  Now, which comes first?  That bill over here or the

Senate voting on it, I don't know. 

 

     But I might look a little more favorable towards it if there are

some changes made so that, for instance, something that was not

intended by Congress to be used for General Motors and Ford, as an

example, it was used for that. 

 

     You know, it's one things to help liquefy the banks to enhance

credit because that's a very macro approach.  But picking and choosing

winners in our economy like what industries to help or not to help was

not intended and it is very good public policy. 

 

     You know, I did vote for this in the first instance.  Then you

find things like -- when I say "in the first instance," meaning back

in October.  So then you find things like -- it was supposed to be

meant to take toxic paper out of the banking system so that it was

clogging the flow of credit so credit could flow.  And that was, in

turn, in an indirect way, supposed to help the decline of housing.

And it wasn't used that way.  It was used to liquefy the banks. 

 

     Now, I understand that that could work.  It may work.  I don't

know.  And I think it's fair to say that it's an investment rather

than an expenditure because we get preferred stock and we're getting 5

percent return on that.  In two years, we'll get 9 percent.  There's

great incentives for the banks to buy it back and get the money back

into the federal treasury. 

 

     But that wasn't what we were sold by the treasury secretary.  It

was necessary to get the stock out -- I mean, the toxic paper out.  It

wasn't used for that. 

 

     So now, it causes me to think twice about voting for the second

round.  And I'll leave it at that because we're kind of in a state of

limbo about what restrictions might be put on it. 

 

     I wish there was such legislation coming from the Senate instead

of having to think about consideration of a House bill right now

because it may not give us a clear picture of exactly what

opportunities we have when the TARP legislation comes up in the

Senate. 

 

     QUESTION:  Can I ask you one more? 

 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Yes, you sure can.  I'm sorry. 

 

     QUESTION:  Were you -- tell me your impressions of the Obama

treasury secretary nominee during the finance hearings? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Well, now, that's going to be Friday or maybe put off

until Wednesday.  But I've had two meetings with him.  I guess I can

say because of yesterday, I've had three meetings with him. 

 

     And reviewing his background, his record of public service, and

his participation in some of the things that the Fed has tried to do

in the credit crunch, I don't believe there's any doubt about his

qualifications.  For a partisan person like Obama appointing a

relative political independent as Geithner is, I think that that's a

plus.  But, you know, this has come up now about his income tax.  And

maybe you didn't know about that, but at least that's come up. 

 

     And it's a little disconcerting.  I'm not saying at this point

it's disqualifying.  But it's a little more important about income tax

for somebody that's overseeing the IRS than there is, maybe, for the

secretary of agriculture, as an example.  And Vilsack doesn't have any

problems along that line. 

 

     But, so, I'm Republican leader.  And so I have to -- we've known

about this problem and tried to get information.  We got our last

information as late as last week.  And we have -- I've known about it.

Senator Baucus has known about it.  Nobody else has known about it. 

 

     And so we had a meeting yesterday with him.  People raised

questions.  I didn't hear anybody say that they weren't going to vote

for him based on this.  But it's kind of in the court of public

opinion or in the court of opinion of more senators now.  And so I'm

going to let it play out.  And I never usually make announcements

about how I'm going vote on nominees until after the hearing.  And so

that will be Friday at the earliest. 

 

     QUESTION:  Thank you. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Mike Glover?

 

     Jim Boyd?

 

     Mary Rae Bragg?

 

     QUESTION:  Nothing this morning.  Thank you, sir. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Ed Tibbets? 

 

     QUESTION:  Senator, on the Geithner matter, you said that it's

not disqualifying right now.  Is there more information that you need

to decide whether this is -- this income tax business is

disqualifying?  Or have you got the information that you need? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  I think I've got all the information I need.  But, you

know, I -- I am the only person, as of 12 hours ago, that had access

to that information.  And I think, in a collegial body like I have, I

have a responsibility, at least on the Republican side, to discuss and

contact my members and see how they view it as well. 

 

     And that's where we are right now. 

 

     QUESTION:  Can you give some insight into what it is that you're

telling your colleagues on the Republican side about the seriousness

of this matter?  I mean, I'm sure they look to you for guidance.  What

are you saying to them? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  I haven't had any discussions with anybody yesterday.

And I can tell you what I said yesterday -- because I can speak for

myself.  I can't speak for my colleagues.  But I spoke about, as you

heard me say to the previous about his qualifications and his

political independence, everybody seems to think he can handle the

job.  And those are mitigating factors to the fact that he didn't pay

the income tax.  And he seems to be very sincere in his approach to

it. 

 

     And I think he showed that sincerity yesterday that he's -- he

used words -- maybe I shouldn't say what he said, but I think he'll

probably end up saying this if we have the hearing Friday, that he's

embarrassed; that he's sorry that he put the Senate through this

trouble. 

 

     And that's about where we left it because I haven't had any

follow-up discussions with my colleagues. 

 

     QUESTION:  And if I may, just a couple of others on this subject.

 

     Do you accept the answers that he and the administration have

given that this was an oversight?  That he acted to correct it

immediately?  Do you accept that answer as being wholly truthful? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Yes, I do. 

 

     QUESTION:  OK. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  And I think most everybody else did, too.  I didn't

hear anybody, you know, with any sneers or any -- afterwards, you

know, like some people might say, ha ha, you know stuff like that.

And, you know -- so that's where we have to leave it. 

 

     QUESTION:  So...

 

     GRASSLEY:  Go ahead. 

     QUESTION:  Yes, I was going to say is it a matter of seeing how

this plays out in public to decide whether you vote for him or not?

Whether this undermines his credibility in this office or not?  Is

that sort of what you're waiting to see? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  I think at this point all I can say is I got the tax

on the table to  establish total transparency in the information

process.  You know, you might -- I might have a better answer to you a

couple of days from now, but not right now. 

 

     QUESTION:  OK.  That's all I've got.  Thanks, sir. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Jane Norman?

 

     QUESTION:  Senator, did you have trouble obtaining this

information from the president-elect's transition team? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  No, I don't think so.  But we did work on it for the a

long period of time.  He -- there is one or two things on the

immigration issue where we had a little bit of a problem.  And -- but

he said that he gave everything to the transition.  There may have

been some e-mails that we had a little trouble getting.  And I'm not

sure that I can give you the details of that, not that it's -- it's

all in the -- I think this stuff is all in the report we put out

yesterday. 

 

     The documents may not be there, but I think there's references to

them a great deal.  And we did -- when I first heard about this,

probably two weeks before Christmas and maybe Christmas (inaudible) --

but, the staff's been working pretty tough on it and hard on it.  And

I think that we did find some things that the screening committee for

the transition team did not find. 

 

     QUESTION:  Do you know what those things were? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Let's see.  Well, why don't I have -- I think we can

give you that information.  I don't have it in my head right now.

I'll have Jill get back to you. 

 

     QUESTION:  Do you find that a problem?  Do you think there's

other things out there, then, that aren't being found by the

transition team? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  We don't think so. 

 

     QUESTION:  And I could ask one more thing on another subject.

The SCHIP bill which is going to be coming up in the House today, do

you anticipate this is going to get through the Senate as quickly as

some other people seem to be saying it should? 

 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Well, you know how hard a worked on that against the

majority of my own caucus two years ago to get a bipartisan agreement.

We got one.  And it's just not working out quite as bipartisan as we'd

hoped. 

 

     And I don't think that that's to Senator Baucus' satisfaction.  I

think he's getting pressure from his caucus to not be as bipartisan as

has been.  And so on a few issues like, for instance, a hard cap on

stopping -- I forget the word we used -- but encouragement for people

to leave their own private health insurance and get into SCHIP -- I'll

use a word "outflow" of people from private to public just because the

public program is there. 

 

     And then this issue about legal (sic) aliens -- and that's

probably the most difficult thing for me because in the Welfare Reform

Bill of 1996, I think it was, we started to enforce these contracts

that had been required since the 1880s or 1990s that Jay Norman

advocated for bringing somebody in from overseas and somebody thought

they might become a public charge for that hundred and some years,

you'd been signing the contract with a government that you made sure

never became a public charge.  Those had never been enforced. 

 

     So this -- the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 enforced that.  In

other words, for a period of five years, none of those people could

get on Medicaid and, I think, other public charge programs.  And so

the Democrats want to let these people -- these contracts be violated

and the Americans that signed these contracts not keep their

obligations to the taxpayers and let them become a public charge which

is being on Medicaid, in this case, child health. 

 

     And that's a major problem.  And the Democrats are pretty

insistent that we repeal that law for -- at least for SCHIP.  And I

feel very strongly that if you sign a contract with the government

that brings people over here and you promise that they're not going to

cost the taxpayers anything, you ought to keep your word to the

taxpayers. 

 

     And I don't know the Democrats think that that's bad policy.  But

it's almost a litmus test for them.  And that's -- and these two or

three things that I just mentioned, Jane, I don't know whether things

will change now.  But right now it looks like if might be very

difficult for me to be part of a bipartisan program.  And it seems to

me it's coming not to Baucus' liking but to being pushed on him by

other people. 

 

     QUESTION:  Well, in other words, the Senate would just accept the

House version of SCHIP?

 

     GRASSLEY:  That could be where they go.  Or they could take up

the Senate bill and go to conference.  But I don't know.  But it will

be -- it will be pretty much -- could be very much a partisan divide.

And, you know, for the a guy like me that shed so much blood and took

such a hammering from my own party, it's a real disappointment to me

that I've been so cooperative that my side of the aisle is being so

ignored. 

 

     Anybody else?  I think I went through the list as best I could. 

 

     QUESTION:  Mike Myers, sir. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Yes.  We didn't have you circled, Mike.  Go ahead. 

 

     QUESTION:  How do you believe Senator Harry Reid has handled the

Illinois Senate matter with Mr. Burris after first the caucus signing

-- all the senators signed a letter we will not seat the gentleman.

Now he's virtually assured of being a senator.  What does that tell

you about Harry Reid's leadership? 

 

     GRASSLEY:  Well, it doesn't tell me anything about his

leadership.  It tells me he didn't read the Constitution and the

Supreme Court decisions.  Because if you read the Adam Clayton Powell

case, it's pretty clear that you have the right age, the right

citizenship, and the residency requirements that the Supreme Court

says that the House of Representative -- and it's no different than

the Senate -- you've got to seat them. 

 

     QUESTION:  Well, I'm asking you about his political backbone, not

the Constitution, as to how do you think he handled this matter

because he's going to have other tough issues coming for him.  He

might have to stand up to the president and his own party. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  But other tough issues may not be as clear-cut as what

the Supreme Court said in an instance like this.  And so, you know,

either he's -- I don't know what to say about it.  I mean, it's just

-- to me, it's -- it shouldn't be questioned. 

 

     QUESTION:  OK.  Thank you. 

 

     GRASSLEY:  OK.  Anybody else?  OK.  Thank you all very much.