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Affiliation | Republican |
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Name | Chuck Grassley |
Address | New Hartford, Iowa , United States |
Email | None |
Website | [Link] |
Born |
September 17, 1933 |
Died |
Still Living
(91 years) |
Contributor | Barack O-blame-a |
Last Modifed | ev Jul 19, 2024 09:10am |
Tags |
Married - Freemason - Baptist -
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Info | Charles Ernest Grassley
Keeping in touch with Iowans enables Sen. Chuck Grassley to bring Iowa common sense to official Washington. From the river towns along the mighty Mississippi to the farm communities nestled among the Loess Hills in Western Iowa, Chuck Grassley stays well-informed by holding open meetings in each of Iowa's 99 counties every year. A hallmark of Grassley's commitment to make representative government work, the senior senator from Iowa works hard to give individual Iowans a voice in Washington. Plus, from his assignments on Capitol Hill, Grassley is where he needs to be to advocate for Iowa's interests.
The only working family farmer in the U.S. Senate, Grassley brings true grit to his congressional oversight responsibilities. Seeking a more accountable government, Grassley works to keep Washington honest.
Whether it's tracking constituent casework or going head-to-head with the Pentagon, Grassley works to make the federal government work better. He successfully led a six-year campaign to make Congress live under the same laws as the rest of the country.
Sinking his teeth into the federal government's bureaucratic alphabet soup, Grassley has fostered reforms of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the federal agency that runs Medicare, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Keeping vigil against waste, fraud and abuse, Grassley also is a perennial recipient of the Taxpayer's Friend Award. As the second most senior member of the Senate Budget Committee, Grassley champions fiscal discipline. Involved in negotiating the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Grassley helped shepherd through Congress the first balanced federal budget since 1969.
Grassley's tenacity has earned renown inside the Beltway and outside Washington. The Iowa senator's tight grip on the federal purse strings has brought results for the taxpayers. Working to combat fraud against the government by defense contractors in 1986, Grassley won passage of amendments to the False Claims Act. To date, the Grassley amendments have recovered more than $5.6 billion to the U.S. Treasury and have helped to deter untold billions more. The Grassley provisions have become the government's most effective weapon against health care fraud.
Honoring the memory of the American servicemen still missing from the Vietnam War, it was Chuck Grassley who in 1992 successfully challenged the U.S. government to release over a million pages of documents about those left behind as POWs and MIAs. Grassley pulled back the cloak of secrecy that had surrounded this painful chapter in American history. For the families and loved ones of those brave men, there was no stronger advocate than Iowa's senior senator.
A farm-state lawmaker, Grassley exercises his authority on the Senate Judiciary and Finance Committees to watch out for rural America's interests. Trouble-shooting for the Midlands, Grassley has taken a leading role in Washington to monitor mega-mergers and potentially anti-competitive behavior. Specifically, Grassley has asked the U.S. Justice Department to gauge disproportionate impacts that corporate mergers in the banking, airline, chemical, seed, railway, telecommunications, and utilities industries may have on farmers, small business owners, workers, and consumers in rural America. Grassley has introduced legislation that would for the first time give the USDA expanded authority to challenge anti-competitive practices in agribusiness if it finds a merger would cause substantial harm to the ability of independent producers and family farmers to compete in the marketplace.
After working two years to bring increased competition to under-served markets like Iowa, Grassley crossed a major legislative hurdle in 2000 to open the door for increased airline competition to Iowans. Start-up and budget carriers now will have a better opportunity to get their businesses off the ground in Iowa. Meaningful airline competition will improve Iowa's ability to attract and keep a competitive business climate that supports high-paying jobs.
In January 2001, Grassley earned the prized chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee. He calls the committee the "Quality of Life Committee" because it's responsible for all federal taxes, Medicare, a prescription drug benefit for seniors, Medicaid, Social Security, international trade, employer-sponsored pensions, workers' compensation, and welfare policy.
Under Grassley's chairmanship, Congress passed the largest tax cut in a generation and gave American families the right to keep more of their hard-earned paychecks. His bipartisan plan cuts rates for every taxpayer. It increases the child tax credit and makes it refundable for lower-income Americans. It reduces the marriage tax penalty and helps parents pay for education, making college tuition tax deductible. It makes it easier to save more for retirement with expanded IRAs and pensions. And it helps pass family farms and businesses to the next generation with death tax relief and eventual repeal.
Grassley underscored his strengths as a legislative leader, earning praise from Republican, Democrat and Independent lawmakers. His ability to build consensus across the political spectrum gives Iowa a respected and effective voice on Capitol Hill.
Grassley also understands first-hand the ins and outs of farming and how policy decisions in Washington impact the rural economy. Scoring a major victory for the Midwest when he orchestrated congressional approval to extend the ethanol program to 2007, Grassley continues pushing the envelope to develop new opportunities for farmers to prosper with renewable energy - including wind, biomass, soy diesel and animal waste nutrients - and an aggressive trade agenda to open new markets for Iowa ag products.
In addition to commodities, Grassley knows that selling Iowa goods and services around the world is vitally important to the strong, diversified economy the state needs to keep good-paying jobs and young people in Iowa. Since 1986, Grassley has hosted ambassadors from countries around the globe on a biennial tour of his home state to showcase Iowa's people, products and places to our trading partners.
Grassley's commitment to Iowa's future and the next generation prompted him to launch an extensive, first-of-its-kind statewide initiative to address Iowa's growing drug problem. Called Face It Together (F.I.T.), Grassley spearheaded the grassroots-based anti-drug strategy to help Iowa families work together to keep their communities, schools and workplaces drug-free. As co-chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Grassley takes aim at money laundering, crime rings and drug trafficking that victimize America's youth.
While Senator Grassley works in Washington, he lives in Iowa. He returns home almost every weekend. He and his wife Barbara raised five children in New Hartford. They have nine grandchildren.
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ENDORSEMENTS |
IRS Commissioner - Mar 09, 2023 |
D |
Daniel I. Werfel |
IA Treasurer - R Primary - Jun 07, 2022 |
R |
Roby Smith |
IA Auditor - R Primary - Jun 07, 2022 |
R |
Mary Ann Hanusa |
US Ambassador to Japan - Dec 18, 2021 |
D |
Rahm Emanuel |
US Secretary of Housing & Urban Development - Mar 10, 2021 |
D |
Marcia L. Fudge |
IA District 03 - R Primary - Jun 02, 2020 |
R |
David Young |
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board - Jan 23, 2018 |
R |
Jerome H. "Jay" Powell |
US Attorney General - Apr 23, 2015 |
NPA |
Reject |
US Secretary of Commerce - Oct 20, 2011 |
NPA |
Reject |
Solicitor General of the United States - Jun 06, 2011 |
D |
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Aug 05, 2010 |
NPA |
Reject |
IA District 03 - R Primary - Jun 08, 2010 |
R |
Jim Gibbons |
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board - Jan 28, 2010 |
NPA |
Reject |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Aug 06, 2009 |
NPA |
Reject |
Solicitor General of the United States - Mar 19, 2009 |
NPA |
Reject |
US Deputy Secretary of Defense - Feb 11, 2009 |
NPA |
Reject |
US Attorney General - Feb 02, 2009 |
D |
Eric Holder |
IA State House 017 - R Primary - Jun 06, 2006 |
R |
Patrick Grassley |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Jan 31, 2006 |
R |
Samuel A. Alito Jr. |
Supreme Court - Chief Justice - Sep 29, 2005 |
R |
John G. Roberts Jr. |
Second Circuit Court Judge - Oct 02, 1998 |
NPA |
Reject |
Member of the Federal Reserve Board - Aug 11, 1994 |
NPA |
Reject |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Jul 29, 1994 |
D |
Stephen G. Breyer |
U.S. Surgeon General - Sep 07, 1993 |
NPA |
Reject |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Aug 03, 1993 |
D |
Ruth Bader Ginsburg |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Oct 15, 1991 |
R |
Clarence Thomas |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Oct 02, 1990 |
R |
David Souter |
IA US President - R Caucuses - Feb 08, 1988 |
R |
Robert J. "Bob" Dole |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Feb 03, 1988 |
R |
Anthony M. Kennedy |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Oct 23, 1987 |
R |
Robert H. Bork |
US Secretary of Commerce - Oct 18, 1987 |
NPA |
Reject |
US Ambassador to Mozambique - Sep 11, 1987 |
NPA |
Reject |
Supreme Court - Chief Justice - Sep 17, 1986 |
R |
William H. Rehnquist |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Sep 17, 1986 |
R |
Antonin Scalia |
Supreme Court - Associate Justice - Sep 21, 1981 |
R |
Sandra Day O'Connor |
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