WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today asked for a full accounting of the standard ... Read More >>
MODERATOR: The following is an unrehearsed interview with Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, speaking ... Read More >>
I sent a letter to the National Science Foundation's Inspector General requesting... Read More >>
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.