Grassley cites bipartisanship, collaboration as way to get things done

The Gazette
James Q. Lynch
August 13, 2016

CEDAR RAPIDS — Bipartisanship and collaboration with Democratic colleagues has allowed the GOP Senate majority “to make meaningful progress on good ideas from senators on both sides of the aisle,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said Saturday in the Weekly Republican Address.

“That is the dramatic change in the way business is done for you” in the U.S. Senate, Grassley said, citing the accomplishments of the Judiciary Committee that he chairs.

Drawing from the “common-sense nature of Iowans,” Grassley, who is seeking re-election, said he decided early on that the Judiciary Committee, which he has been a member of since arriving in the Senate in 1981, would its time and “your taxpayer dollars” to focus on areas where agreement was possible.

“It’s the right thing to do. And it works,” he said in the weekly address that is a counter to the president’s weekly commentary. “Every one of the 27 bills passed out of the committee under my leadership has had bipartisan support. The president has signed 12 of those bills into law.”

Grassley, who has admitted he’s in his toughest re-election campaign against former Democratic Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, used his time to make the case that his committee has bucked the “do-nothing” reputation of Congress.

However, Judge said Grassley’s list of accomplishments was a smoke-screen for his obstructionism that has come to define him and to tie him to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“For 150 days Chuck Grassley has failed to do his job and hold confirmation hearings to fill the Supreme Court vacancy,” she said in a rebuttal to his radio address.

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