FOX "Interview With Senator Charles Grassley" - Transcript

Interview

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MR. SCOTT: Well, the House and the Senate are now finalizing a compromised version of the economic stimulus plan. So what stays and what's going to go?

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley has taken part in these meetings. He's a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

I understand though, senator, you got a little bit feeling left out of what was happening, at least at first when the conferees got together.

SEN. GRASSLEY: Well, of course, and this is pretty partisan piece of legislation controlled by the Democrats. I know there's three Republicans in the Senate that have gone along, so you would expect that we would not be consulted a whole lot since we voted against it. But we are conferees and we're going to have a chance this afternoon to meet and make our case.

MR. SCOTT: I know that you have said that this is not change we can believe in, you've criticized the president for essentially engaging in politics as usual. I suppose he could say the flip side that Republicans are uniting almost entirely to battle against him in a partisan way.

How do you answer that?

SEN. GRASSLEY: Well, first of all, I would direct my criticism more towards Democrat leadership in the House and Senate than I would President Obama because I thought he set a very good tone a week ago Monday when he met with his leadership and he said, at least it was reported that there are good Republican ideas, we ought to try to work for a Republican to accept some of them and have a bipartisan bill. We offered lots of amendments. There were a lot more amendments that were offered that they wouldn't even let us discuss and most of our amendments were voted down.

So I would say it would be more of my accusal of Democrats on the Hill not working in a bipartisan way than it would be President Obama.

MR. SCOTT: You say one of the problems that you see in this bill is that states like yours, Iowa, you think get the shaft when some of the bigger states are going to be getting the money, at least in the early going.

SEN. GRASSLEY: That's in the area of Medicaid. In the area of education and the area of highways, I would not make that case. But it's very evident and there's a massive amount of money in here, $87 billion for Medicaid, of which only $11 billion of it is needed for recession increase enrollment in Medicaid.

So the other $75 billion is being distributed in a way that we have not distributed Medicaid money in the past, giving emphasis to four or five big states, cheating about 30 states out of two and three tenths billions dollars, my state $128 billion. I offered that amendment for fairness, but it was voted down 49 to 47 and it was pretty much on a party line vote.

MR. SCOTT: A couple of your fellow Republican senators who did sign on with the Senate bill as proposed, Susan Collins of Maine and Olympia Snowe have said that, essentially, the bill that comes out of the conference better be pretty much the one that the Senate, you know, that they voted to authorized or they're not going to vote for it.

Do you see a situation where potentially this legislation that everybody has been talking about for weeks and that everybody on Wall Street and Main Street seems to be looking toward to help save the economy? Do you see a situation where that might not pass in some kind of a Senate compromise?

SEN. GRASSLEY: The answer is no. There's going to be a bill to get to the president and it will have his signature within less than a week, but this does point out the tremendous leverage that the three Republican senators have and I hope they use that leverage and if they're able to use that leverage to get it even down below what the Senate passed, it's going to be more fiscally responsible, but from the big picture, I wouldn't say it's a whole lot better.

I don't have any fault with anything that's going to be spent over the next two years to jumpstart the economy. Most of my party and my consideration of voting against the bill is based on the proposition that there's a large portion of the spending that goes on well into the future. I'll give you one example, computerized medical records, $12 billion, about three or four or five percent is going to be spent in that two year window, beyond that, it's going to be spent over the next seven or eight years.

That other money is not stimulus.

MR. SCOTT: Chuck Grassley, a senator from Iowa. Thank you.

SEN. GRASSLEY: Thank you.

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