Iowa Defense Alliance

Senator Grassley met with residents of Marion and surrounding counties this morning at the Pella Community Center Auditorium. The place was packed out. 150+ I would say. Unfortunately, a bastion of individual liberty, and limited government it was not.

The discussion was dominated by discussion about healthcare. I listened for over an hour to people asking about one section of President Obama’s new insurance plan, or the Republican’s version of the same plan and listening to Grassley expound on what “we want” and “our goals are”. If you want to know what Grassley wants, and what his goals are they are namely government interference in the free market to control costs of healthcare, and more welfare to decrease the number of uninsured in the country. (Read increased bureaucracy that either increases total cost, or limits availability of healthcare, and greater deficit spending to buy the votes of the ignorant.) Anyway, after listening to this for over an hour I had had a belly full. During a rather disorganized part of the discussion I interrupted and requesting that we simplify the matter. If you get down to brass tacks, where, with the exception of Veterans benefits, and possibly federal employee benefits, does the United states Constitution give you the right to vote to spend a single penny of public monies on private medical expenses? I was summarily ignored and derided as being a “young person who doesn’t think healthcare important.” I was also informed that if I should get in an accident and end up a quadriplegic that the tax payers would shoulder my expenses.

Senator Grassley then returned to the previous discussion about Medicare vs. Obamacare, and though I kept my hand up for the rest of the discussion hoping to be able to reiterate the idea of enumerated powers, the 10th amendment, and point out that he had not answered my question, I was deliberately passed over for the rest of the meeting.

So, I would rank Senator Grassley as a part of the problem with the Republican Party. He is a neoconservative who supposedly supports fiscal responsibility and limited government, but when you get down to it, the solution to the problem, any problem, is more big government.

On a positive note, he did promise to co-sponsor S604, provided we send him letters reminding him that in his Town Meeting on July 3rd, in Pella, Iowa, he promised to co-sponsor S604.