Grassley's Partisan Hackery Strikes Again
In his twilight years in the Senate, Iowa's 90 year old senior Senator is reducing his legacy as an independent to rubble
Iowa’s senior US Senator may have once had a reputation as something of an independent Republican in the Senate, but his twilight years in that institution are reducing to rubble whatever remains of that legacy.
Think Chuck Grassley is far removed from the deeply partisan Republican swamp in Washington? Guess again.
Do you still believe that he can be counted on to put the interests of Iowa or the nation above the interest of crass partisanship and his political party?
That hasn’t been true for years.
At age 90, the Senate’s longest serving member - Iowa’s Chuck Grassley - has become the senior member of the Republican swamp, with the ultra partisan credentials to prove it.
As he re-writes his legacy from his early more independent glory days, he has become little more than a simple, partisan party hack.
Pretty sure that when Iowans sent him to Washington nearly 50 years ago that’s not what they sent him there to do.
Behind the scenes, Grassley has always been way more partisan than he lets on to Iowans or in public. In recent years, however, his ability to maintain that charade has slipped sharply.
The most high profile example of Grassley’s growing and excessive partisanship in his twilight years in the Senate occurred when he was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016. That was President Obama’s last full year of his second term in the White House.
The Constitution made clear what was to happen next. The president is directed by the Constitution to nominate a new Justice. The Senate is directed by the Constitution to consider the president’s nominee, and then hold an up or down vote on that nominee after vetting the nominee’s character, judgment and judicial temperament.
None of that happened in 2016.
Senate Republican. Leader Mitch McConnell instructed Chairman Chuck Grassley to hold no Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Obama’s nominee - the now Attorney General Merrick Garland. Grassley meekly obeyed. There would be no Senate consideration and no vote at all on the nomination Obama sent to the Senate as he, the president, was directed to do by the Constitution.
McConnell - with Grassley as his willing and blatantly partisan lackey - froze any consideration of Obama’s nomination of Garland by the Senate, pushing any action to fill the Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court to the following year, when they hoped a Republican would be in the White House.
The Supreme Court hobbled on, for a full year, one Justice short because of that highly partisan gambit which was little more than an “outside the rules” end run around the Constitution.
When Donald Trump - who today is the holder of more than 90 criminal felonies - was elected president in 2016, McConnell and Grassley gifted him with the Supreme Court seat they stole from President Obama.
That appointment was vital in the right wing’s effort to steal away the right of women to make their own health care decisions and to access health care that could literally save - or if denied - cost them their lives.
If you are one of the millions of Americans angered by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, remember that no one - save Mitch McConnell - did more than Chuck Grassley to make over turning Roe v Wade possible with his key involvement in that blatant act of Supreme Court larceny.
Grassley literally chose partisanship and ideology over the Constitution and the proper functioning of our democracy, by blocking Obama’s nominee and circumventing the Constitution.
It is import that we all remember that. I guarantee you history will.
Last week, Grassley demonstrated that his craven willingness to put partisanship and ideology over the interests of America and its democracy in 2016 was no fluke.
He’s doing it again.
As the US House was preparing to pass a $78 billion bi-partisan tax cut bill last week that would expand the child tax credit and restore several business tax credits which have expired, Grassley expressed opposition to the bill.
The Center Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan Washington based policy analysis think tank, says expanding the child tax credit provision in the bill alone would help 16 million kids in low income American families. In its first year, it would lift 400,000 kids out of poverty, according to the group.
Many of those families and kids, of course, live in Iowa. Senator Grassley, apparently, doesn’t care.
The reason Grassley told reporters he opposed the bi-partisan bill:
“Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good - mailing out checks before the election - means he could be re-elected,” Grassley said.
He said Biden’s re-election might stop efforts to extend Trump era tax cuts from 2017 which primarily benefited the very wealthy and big corporations.
Grassley offered no evidence or reason to support his belief that would happen, or if it did, why that would be a bad thing if the American people - in a democratic election- voted to re-elect a president who would let it happen.
Elections matter. It’s how the people speak. If Senator Grassley - believes re-election of Biden would jeopardize the extensions of those big business and wealthy people tax cuts he is so anxious to have extended, then let him take that case to the people in the 2024 election and let the people decide.
In the meantime, Grassley should vote on the legislation before him on its merits, not on his fears that it might be so good that it might help a president not of his party win re-election.
By the way, there are also no provisions in the bill that would authorize checks to be mailed out to anybody. That’s simply a figment of the Senator’s imagination. A hallucination. The bill simply expands the tax credit and renews the expired tax cuts.
The legislation is now in the Senate, where it will go first to the Senate Finance Committee, on which Grassley serves and once headed as Chairman. Perhaps he’ll discover there what is really in the bi-partisan bill - it passed the House 357-70 Wednesday - that he fears is so awesome it will help make President Biden look so good he’ll win re-election.
Every Iowan - whether they support Biden or oppose him - ought to be livid that an Iowa Senator is refusing to back bipartisan legislation that will lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and strengthen millions of families - not because of any good reason he can actually articulate - but because he thinks the legislation may help a president not of his own political party get re-elected.
Senator Grassley needs to consider the bill on its merits alone. Period.
Grassley was not sent to Washington to be a blocker and obstructor for the Republican Party’s partisan ends - without regard to what the effect might be on Iowa, the nation, or American democracy.
But in his twilight years in the Senate, that is the legacy he is writing..
How sad.
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And…I still want to see Grassley under oath to find out what he really knew about the lead up to January 6th events and what he really planned to do on that date, given his Senate role had Pence not shown up. If he musters more than a folksy, convenient,”Well, now, you know, that was a long time ago and I really don’t remember…”
Well written, truthful, but much more than "sad." Traitorous is more accurate, blissfully ignoring the Constitution he swore to uphold. When Grassley famously stood next to Trump, lending his overt support to perhaps the most vile, dishonest, vindictive, "grab 'em by the ***" President in history (along with his two impeachment votes), he told every Iowan everything we needed to know about his own character/cowardice. "Iowa nice" has repeatedly elected nothing more than a thug who dishonors his Office.