Grassley Direct
On my weekly "Capitol Hill Report," I spoke with Tom Williamson of KIIC in Albia and Jacob Hall of the Iowa Standard in Sioux Center about U.S.-Iran relations, USMCA and prescription drug prices.
Q&A: New Year, New Tax Season
Q. What’s in store for 2020?
Q. Why are syndicated conservation easements on your radar?
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After over a year of waiting for the House of Representatives to approve and send the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the Senate, this week I led the Senate Finance Committee in passage of the broad, bipartisan agreement which will update the North American Free Trade Agreement. This modernized trilateral trade agreement will open new markets for American exporters, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, grow the national economy and protect U.S. workers. I expect the full Senate will act soon and that final approval of USMCA is just around the corner. That is good news for millions of farmers, manufacturers and workers in every corner of America.
Over the past year, the Iranian regime has been increasingly aggressive, attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, shooting down a U.S. drone, seizing a British tanker, attacking a Saudi oil facility, attacking U.S. military bases in Iraq and storming the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Another attack that risked many American lives was in the works when President Trump ordered U.S. forces to take out the terrorist mastermind of the Iranian regime. Sometimes you have to stand up to a bully to get him to back off or else you invite further aggression. I also supported a resolution honoring the members of the military and intelligence community who carried out the successful mission that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and a designated terrorist. Watch my floor speech on Iranian aggression here.
In 1986, I authored the False Claims Act, which allows the government to recover taxpayer dollars from entities that defrauded federal agencies. The federal government recovered more than $3 billion in taxpayer dollars lost to fraud in 2019 alone through this program. Whistleblower claims account for more than two-thirds of those recoveries. Since its enactment in 1986, the False Claims Act has been responsible for more than $62 billion in recoveries, with my whistleblower provision saving taxpayers more than $44.7 billion.
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Back in the Capitol for a productive 2020
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