U.S. Chamber endorses Grassley
The Courier
Makaya Tendall
June 20, 2016
CEDAR RAPIDS — The nation’s largest organization for business advocacy has thrown its support behind incumbent Republican Sen. Charles Grassley.
Rob Engstrom, senior vice president and national political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, announced his organization’s endorsement of Grassley at an event Friday at CRST International, the Cedar Rapids-based trucking and logistics company.
Grassley is facing Democrat Patty Judge in November’s election.
“Over the course of the last seven or eight years, our members faced an unprecedented threat from big-government liberals in Washington, D.C.,” said Engstrom, noting Grassley is the antidote for that threat. “Voters in Iowa have an opportunity to send a message. They have the clearest choice in America as to who is going to represent them.”
Engstrom said the nation needs leaders who stand against government regulations such as Obamacare and cap-and-trade policies that aim to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Such regulations, he said, hurt businesses and damage the economy.
“It’s taken shape in the regulatory arena with an alphabet soup of government agencies who make it harder for businesses in Iowa to do what they do best, and that’s grow jobs,” Engstrom said. “We have politicians in Washington who say … businesses don’t create jobs. It is time for a full-throated defense of the American free enterprise system.”
Engstrom called Judge, 72, a former Iowa lieutenant governor, state secretary of agriculture and state senator, “a classic tax and spend liberal.”
“She has raised taxes — sales taxes, business taxes — she hasn’t met a tax she doesn’t want to raise,” he said.
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