Sen. Chuck Grassley makes stop in Jefferson during 99-county tour

By SARAH STORTZ
s.stortz@carrollspaper.com

Sen. Chuck Grassley is on the road again for his annual 99-County Tour in Iowa, making a visit to Jefferson Feb. 22.

The U.S. Senator held a Q&A session inside of the Jefferson city hall, meeting with local residents to listen to their concerns. The tour marks 42 years of Grassley holding annual meetings in each of Iowa’s counties.
In the beginning of his meeting, Grassley said one of the questions he always anticipates is “how come you guys in Washington D.C. can’t get along?”
Grassley said he often receives these questions because many citizens feel frustrated with both Democrat and Republican politicians not communicating or working together.

“It isn’t good, but it’s not as bad as people might think, because controversy makes news,” Grassley said during the meeting.

Despite the division between the two parties, Grassley said he’s had a positive working relationship with Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democrat senior U.S. Senator from Illinois.
Durbin chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and Grassley is the Ranking Member for the Republicans in the committee.

“We worked for four years to get a criminal justice reform bill passed and nobody knew about it because we were getting along,” Grassley said during the meeting. “But we all have different views on immigration, and so when Grassley and Durbin are disagreeing on some issue, you read about it, but you never read about when we’re doing things.”

Earlier this month, Grassley voiced his support for the EAGLES Act, a legislation named after the mascot of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which was the scene of a deadly mass shooting in 2018.
The EAGLES Act would expand the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) by creating a national program focusing on targeted school violence prevention.

Grassley said the legislation would work as a preventative method by detecting individuals who are suspected to cause harm to themselves or other people.
In regards to Nikolas Cruz, the perpetrator behind the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Grassley said the program would have prevented him from purchasing a firearm.

“If he got some mental health help, it may have helped him, but his name would have been in the databank, so he couldn’t have bought a gun that ended up killing those people,” Grassley said to the press. “This program that the Secret Service runs, it’s just a matter of extending it to getting involved in education and training people in education, so maybe we’ll have less school shootings.”

For the first time since 1980, Grassley is running against other Republican opponents in a primary election. Due to the rising competition, Grassley said he’s “turning it up” more in his campaign this year.

“I’m turning it up because you can’t take anything for granted,” Grassley said to the press. “People say I don’t have to worry, but if I say I don’t have to worry, then I’m in trouble, so you’ve got to be on top of everything.”

The other Republican candidates are Jim Carlin, an Iowa State Senator from Sioux City, and Andrew Foster. Regarding the question of a possible debate, Grassley said he wouldn’t entertain the idea until the filing deadline on March 18.
Outside of his own election, Grassley said he thinks the Republican Party could overtake the U.S. House of Representatives in the next election, but he’s unsure if it could happen to the U.S. Senate.
With the upcoming election season, Grassley said he thinks it’s possible the Republican candidates can win “one or two” of the Senate elections in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and New Hampshire.
Near the end of the meeting, a resident asked Grassley for advice for young Republicans who want to preserve leadership in the future. In response, Grassley discussed maintaining the principle of limited government and how it’s upheld by the U.S. Constitution.

“That principle of limited government allows you to make out of yourself whatever you want to do,” Grassley said during the meeting. “As long as we maintain that system of government, your kids are going to have a good future.”