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 >>
MODERATOR: 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 Jim Turbes with
KWBG Radio in Boone and Gordon Wolf with the Denison Bulletin-Review
in Denison.
The first question will be from Jim Turbes.
TURBES: Well, Senator Grassley, obviously, economic stimulus is
the hot topic this week going around Washington. Your Finance
Committee met on earlier in the week.
You talked about three things: being timely, temporary and
targeted. You felt this package wasn't meeting those guidelines.
Could you explain a little more?
GRASSLEY: Temporary would be the biggest problem I have. The
extent to which you want to spend X number of dollars in this terrible
recession we're in to get the -- get the economy turned around, and it
can be done in that two-year period of time, with a judgment that it's
actually creating jobs, I'm very willing to consider that.
But we've got a lot of money in here that I would call a gravy
train, where a stimulus bill is being used in a subterfuge manner to
-- to get more spending done that's going to go on well beyond two
years.
Just to give you an example, there's money in here for Head
Start. I think Head Start's a good program. I don't think we're
serving enough kids. But there -- they want to serve 55,000 more kids
in this stimulus package. That will create some teaching jobs, yes,
but do you think, at the end of two years, that they're going to fire
those teachers and not serve those kids? No.
But where they're going to get the money, I don't know, because
we can't continue to be passing trillion-dollar, $800 billion or
trillion-dollars bailout packages and stimulus packages all the time
without hyperinflation.
So if they want -- if they want to put more money into Head Start
and 55,000 more kids and all the teachers that go with it, then that
ought to be done through the regular appropriation process, not
through the subterfuge of a stimulus bill. And there's lots of that.
OK, next question.
WOLF: Yes, Gordon Wolf from the Denison Bulletin-Review.
Senator, is anything being done on the federal level to coordinate the
stimulus package with the states? Right now, Iowa, for example, is
doing a lot of bills pertaining to rebuilding Iowa. And would some of
this be duplicate?
GRASSLEY: The answer to that is probably on highways, no. In
some other areas, the answer might be yes, but I'm not sure I can give
you an example of the latter.
But in the case of highways, Iowa is getting less gas tax money
than what they anticipated, so there are some highways they aren't
building. So then there's a lot of engineered projects on the shelf
that can be taken off, and this money comes in, and I think they can
start building highways that wouldn't be built today. Maybe they'd be
built five years from now, but build them now, and probably create
some jobs in -- that we would create some jobs in the -- in the
process as an example.
TURBES: Senator, I know we're getting to that time of the year
when people are starting to look at their taxes. Would -- is some of
this involving some tax relief? I know there are some tax benefits
that have been talked about in there. Again, there's a ways to go on
this, it looks like.
GRASSLEY: Well, based upon payroll taxes, but actually coming
out of reducing withholding over a period of five or six months each
of the next two years, there would be up to $500 per person and $1,000
per married couple to get less withholding, which means that they
would have more money to spend based on the proposition that -- that
consumers make up 70 percent of our -- of our economy.
Then there's also a lesser amount of money, but still a
significant amount of money to encourage some investment that is the
best way to create jobs and to stimulate the economy. Change tax
policy so people will then spend and invest and then thus, by
expanding your business, creating jobs, hiring more people, and those
are long-term jobs. Those aren't temporary jobs, like I explained for
the stimulus spending.
And examples of that would be enhanced depreciation, allowing to
write off in one year more things that you'd spread out and
depreciation over a longer period of time. It would include a lot of
changes in energy incentives, solar, wind, try to get those industries
moving very quickly, as an example.
WOLF: Yes, Gordon Wolf again. Senator, has anything been done
to track what was done with the economic stimulus given to the
financial institutions? And in light of that, are you wary of the new
stimulus package?
GRASSLEY: I am wary of the new stimulus package, but it ought to
be seen as a little more direct approach to getting out of the
recession than liquefying banks. There's plenty of oversight in
place. It hasn't cranked up fully.
And one of the areas where I just introduced legislation
yesterday with Senator Baucus, a bipartisan bill, was to allow the
Government Accountability Office access to direct bank documents.
Under present law, they have access to anything that the Treasury has,
but Treasury -- and Treasury has to cooperate with them, but they
don't have -- that's indirect access to the banks, and we may not get
-- the Treasury may not push for it.
So we want the Government Accountability Office to go in there
and oversee and see if that money is being wisely used.
TURBES: With the -- the economy the way it's been -- and, of
course, we saw the numbers coming out already today -- Ford, big loss,
the higher numbers again on unemployment -- you all along had told
people to be -- be cautious and, again, to remain calm, not to panic
in this.
Are you pretty comfortable with the way things are moving? I
mean, it seems real hectic to us, following all the news on the
stimulus packages and things like that in Washington. But are -- are
you pretty comfortable with the way things are moving ahead?
GRASSLEY: The process is moving ahead OK. If you're going to --
you've got to be timely, as I said. So from that standpoint, it's
moving along OK.
But here's where I'm very disappointed. President Obama, running
on a platform of more bipartisanship, this bill is totally partisan.
We were -- Republicans, either in the Appropriations Committee or my
Finance Committee, didn't see the bill until, you know, 24 hours
before.
And it's a massive piece of legislation. And we kind of
anticipated some things, so we weren't totally caught in the dark.
But let me tell you what bipartisanship is and how Senator Baucus
and I on the Finance Committee did it the six years I was chairman and
the last two years that he was chairman, and he's chairman again now.
Bipartisanship means that you sit down, the two of us and our staff --
sometimes there's other senators involved -- and work out a compromise
piece of legislation, so when the bill is put before the committee,
it'd be a Grassley-Baucus bill, when I was chairman, or it would be a
Baucus-Grassley bill when he was chairman.
And then we would decide to stick together through other people's
amendments. And probably at that point, we would feel we'd have 60 or
70 members of the Senate with us, so you were fighting off a few
people on the fringe right and the fringe left.
And then you'd end up with the same way through the Senate,
through the House, and conference, and to the president. And this is
being handled not that way, so this is very partisan.
WOLF: Senator, changing gears here and talking about the
National Science Foundation and those that were surfing porn on the
Internet, in my business, if we did that, that would be grounds for
immediate dismissals. What has happened to those people accused...
GRASSLEY: Well, the one outstanding example of a guy that spent
20 percent of his time over a two-year period of time at the cost of
$58,000 to the taxpayers either quit or was fired. He's no longer
there. But I'm not going to be satisfied with that, so I'm asking for
more documents.
But you're right. Corporate America would not put up with that.
And we shouldn't be putting up with it in the federal.
In fact, there ought to be more reason not to put up with it,
because we're dealing with the taxpayers' money. It doesn't show that
we're being very good trustees of the money.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Jim and Gordon, for participating in
today's public affairs program. This has been Senator Chuck Grassley
reporting to the people of Iowa.
GRASSLEY: Thanks to all of you.