Charles Grassley

Iowa Republican senator Charles Grassley has become one of the most influential political leaders in America. As former chair of the influential Senate Finance Committee amongst other committees, he has considerable influence on law and policy surrounding issues such as trade, taxes, Medicaid, and Social Security. His modest personal style mirrors the majority of Iowa's voting public, and his conservative but pragmatic political ideology continues to win him respect and votes both in Congress and at home.

Of the People

Born Charles Ernest Grassley on September 17, 1933, "Chuck" Grassley embodies the typical Iowan of the late-twentieth century. He was born in a small town of New Hartford, Iowa. (According to the 2021 US Census, the population of New Hartford was 571.)

Grassley is a farmer in one of the most rural states in the nation and claims that he is the only working farmer in the Senate. While his son Robin currently operates the family farm, Grassley lends credence to his claim by returning many weekends to lend a hand in managing the property. Like many Iowans, most of whom belong to Protestant denominations, he is a Baptist.

Grassley married Barbara Speicher in 1954. They have five children: Lee, Wendy, Robin, Michele, and Jay, and several grandchildren. He received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1955 and his master's degree in 1956, both from the University of Northern Iowa. He also completed PhD work at the University of Iowa.

Grassley stays in touch with voters by holding open town meetings in each of Iowa's ninety-nine counties every year. "Washington can use more of the common-sense advice that I get from Iowans during my county visits," according to Grassley. "It's a good reality-check for me, too. I feel like I'm better prepared to fight the Washington nonsense."

Election to the Senate

In addition to taking over his family's farm after his father died in 1960, Grassley worked as a metal shearer from 1959–61 and an assembly line worker from 1961–71. But the bulk of his career has been in politics. His one political loss came in a race for the Iowa legislature in 1956. He won a seat in the Iowa House of Representatives in 1958, where he served until 1974.

While gathering disarray in the Republican Party eventually led to Democrat Jimmy Carter's election as president in 1976, Grassley moved to the national political stage as Iowa's 3rd district congressman in the first post-Watergate election in November 1974. He replaced the retiring H. R. Gross, who was known to be an extreme fiscal conservative, helping to set the tone for Grassley's role in Congress.

In 1980, as the Republican Party made a comeback with the election of Ronald Reagan as President, Grassley gained further national attention in his bid for the Senate against liberal Democratic incumbent John Culver. His winning campaign was supported by a number of conservative groups, including the National Conservative Political Action Committee.

Saving Taxpayers Money

In addition to working on constituent concerns such as farm policy, Grassley has devoted himself to bringing fiscal discipline to government. He helped ferret out waste, such as bills for $7,600 coffeemakers, in defense procurement during the 1980s and has remained dedicated to financial accountability for the Department of Defense.

Grassley also helped eliminate health care fraud by drafting amendments to the False Claims Act, also known as the "Lincoln Law." First enacted during the Civil War to combat the fraud perpetrated by companies that sold supplies to the Union Army, the Grassley/Berman amendments passed in 1986 give whistleblowers who bring successful cases 15 to 30 percent of the government's recovery, while their attorneys are guaranteed payment of their regular hourly fees by the defendant. Often used to combat Medicare fraud, The US Department of Justice claims the amendments recovered more than $10 billion.

Grassley has conducted oversight of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He protected FBI employee Coleen Rowley from agency reprisals after she revealed FBI bumbling on terrorism issues following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

He has also fostered reforms of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in particular, monitoring compliance with provisions of the 1998 taxpayers-rights law.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman

From January to June 2001, Grassley served as chair of the Senate Finance Committee. He called the committee the "Quality of Life Committee" because of its responsibility for all federal taxes and Medicare and its jurisdiction over Medicaid, Social Security, international trade, employer-sponsored pensions, workers' compensation, and welfare policy.

When Senator Jim Jeffords switched his party affiliation in May 2001, shifting the control of the Senate to the Democrats, Grassley lost his leadership role on the committee to Democrat Max Baucus. In his short tenure as chair in 2001, Grassley was able to shepherd President George W. Bush's tax cut plan through Congress.

With the return of the Senate to Republican control following the 2002 midterm elections, Grassley once again became chair. During his second tenure as chair, he addressed issues such as pension reform, abusive tax shelters, corporate expatriation, and tax incentives to encourage charitable giving. Grassley was reelected to the Senate in 2004 and remained Finance Committee chair until 2006. In 2007 Grassley began an ongoing Senate probe into six popular televangelist ministries, responding to allegations that the ministries were using their tax-exempt status to pay for luxury items. In the Senate he has voted to ban partial-birth abortions except for cases of danger to maternal life (2003); voted to build a fence along the US border with Mexico (2006); and voted to make more children eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (2007). Throughout the first decades of the twenty-first century, Grassley remained a key Republican voice in Congress, chairing committees such as the Judiciary and Finance, as well as the Aging Committee and the Narcotics Caucus.

Grassley served as the Senate's president pro tempore, the third person in the presidential line of succession behind the vice president and the speaker of the house, from 2019 to 2021. In 2022, Grassley won reelection to his eighth term in Congress. He has served as the ranking member of the Budget Committee and served on the Judiciary; Finance; and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committees. Additionally, he served as the Vice Chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. In 2023, Grassley, at the age of eighty-nine, was the oldest Senate Republican. In January 2024 he was hospitalized for an infection. Later that same year, the senator was asked to comment after questions arose about President Joe Biden's fitness for office amid what some saw as signs of dementia and physical infirmity. Grassley, who at ninety was then nine years older than the president, refused to comment on the president's fitness as far as his age was concerned, calling it a family matter. Biden later withdrew from his reelection campaign but remained in office as president.

Bibliography

“American Community Survey 5-Year Data (2009-2021).” Census Bureau, 8 Dec. 2022, www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year.html. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

"Biography." US Senate, www.grassley.senate.gov/about/biography. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

Price, Dave. "Grassley, 90, Responds to Age-Related Concerns of Biden, 81." Microsoft Start, www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/grassley-90-responds-to-age-related-concerns-of-biden-81/ar-BB1q2zzF?ocid=BingNewsVerp. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

Rimmer, Morgan. "Chuck Grassley, 90-Year-Old US Senator from Iowa, Hospitalized with Infection." CNN, 16 Jan. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/01/16/politics/chuck-grassley-hospitalized-with-infection/index.html. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

"Voting Record." Senator Chuck Grassley, 2023, www.grassley.senate.gov/about/voting-record. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.