A group of Eagle Grove small business owners, along with two Wright County Supervisors and City Administrator Bryce Davis, gathered to meet for a Q&A session with Senator Chuck Grassley last Thursday morning, Feb. 18. The stop was one of several others Grassley made last week in an effort to spend time listening to his constituents around Iowa.
“I appreciate very much you gathering to let me answer questions for you or just listen to your point of view, whatever you want me to do, because I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to have a representative government you have to have dialogue between you and me. This is the best way to do it because you can see me and I can see you,” said Grassley of his stop at one of Eagle Grove’s newest businesses, The Grove Inn & Suites.
Supervisor Dean Kluss presented the first question for Grassley to answer. His concern was over drainage districts and the fact that the federal government (mainly the Fish and Wildlife Service) refuses to pay taxes/fees when they buy or are gifted land that has a drainage district in it.
“That makes that burden heavier on the other landowners,” said Kluss.
He wanted to know what needs to be done to change that law.
Grassley responded saying, “I wouldn’t have known about this problem if you hadn’t told me, so thank you.”
He plans to look into this in more detail and then put together a letter to the Fish and Wildlife Service and ask them why they are not paying. That will tell them whether that’s something within the agency or not.
Mickey Cooper of Eagle Grove Pharmacy didn’t so much have a question for Grassley, but instead praised him for his work with insulin and understanding what they go through in the healthcare system.
“I appreciate how that was a bi-partisan issue and how you spent two years on that. That should be front page news instead of the other stuff.”
Cooper was referring to a January 14, 2021 report that Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) led an investigation into the skyrocketing cost of insulin, a drug that is over 100 years old. The bi-partisan investigation found that it is a result of companies putting profits over customers. You can read the report at https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/grassley-wyden-release-insulin-investigation-uncovering-business-practices-between-drug-companies-and-pbms-that-keep-prices-high.
Grassley said it probably would have been front page news but unfortunately the results were released right around the time of the Trump impeachment hearings and the attack on the Capitol.
“Usually when a patent runs out, you almost give the pills away compared to what you pay for pills under patent,” said Grassley. “They find some excuse to raise the price…but the point is whether the price is high or low, what’s wrong with all these products, and insulin is a perfect example, you’ve got the company manufacturing it…you have a pharmacy benefit manager, kind of a middle person, and the games that are played there and you don’t know about it…it shows the lack of transparency, because if this stuff is known they wouldn’t get away with it.”
Grassley said the report in and of itself doesn’t necessarily mean the price is going to drop, but it will outrage the public so he is writing a bill to limit increases to no more than two percent a year compared to five or 10 percent in the past.
Eagle Grove Chamber Director Sara Middleton addressed COVID with Senator Grassley. She told him that while she appreciates the amount of relief given to small businesses, she was frustrated with how long it took to get an “appropriate relief package that would help the smallest of businesses'' like many in Eagle Grove and Wright County. She heard too often when talking to these businesses that they didn’t qualify because they didn’t have enough employees.
“What can we do more for our small businesses,” she asked.
Grassley talked about the time-frame from June to September because they shut down the economy on March 10. Twenty-two million people lost their jobs. Schools closed down. Businesses closed. The stock market went from $30,000 to $18,000. Then they had the pandemic to fight.
“After a week we shut the government down, we were told by the end of this week we’ve got to have a package put together to fight the virus and help the people,” said Grassley.
They put together a package around $2 trillion. That was $350 billion for PPE equipment. They thought it would last for three months. It only lasted three weeks.
“This is how little we knew about what was ahead of us,” he said. “We put it together so fast, we didn’t know.”
He continued saying that when they finally got things put together before Christmas, they made sure you had to have at least a 25 percent decrease in income for businesses to qualify for help in order to make sure people weren’t taking advantage of it.
“I hope we’re taking care of the people now you’re talking about,” said Grassley.
Middleton explained that her concerns were the businesses like Grammas’ Attic and Red Head Tribe Logos in Eagle Grove who were just barely getting started in 2019, and comparing a 25 percent decrease in 2020 from the previous year really wasn’t a fair judgement because they only had a few months of operation.
Grassley said if there are businesses Middleton knows about who she believes didn’t get the relief they should have, he would be happy to contact SBA for them and try to fill in the loop holes.
Other questions asked of Grassley included Colleen Bartlett of the Career Academy in Eagle Grove wanting to know his stance on eliminating student debt. One thing he would like to see is PELL grants being available for students attending trade schools, not just colleges. He is not in favor of using taxpayer dollars to pay off student loans, especially when you consider these students with debt may not even actually graduate from college.
“It seems to me there is some unfairness,” he said. “I think it would be a bad policy.”
Grassley also listened carefully as local contractor Bob Torkelson talked about affordable housing loopholes and how hard it makes it to meet requirements for government assistance but still making the housing/commercial property affordable for people but still profitable for him.
Grassley admitted it was an overly complicated process but that people must be making it work or there “wouldn’t be a single dollar leaving Washington, D.C.”
“Supervisor Karl Helgevold jumped in saying that everybody has their problems but overall Wright County is fairing well.
“Our student enrollment is up which is not normal for small towns. Our employment is up. Our housing is up…so things are happening,” he told Grassley. Then he acknowledged his appreciation for the work Grassley does every day in Washington to help communities in Iowa like ours succeed.
Cooper echoed Helgevold’s notice of prosperity in Wright County, and Eagle Grove specifically, saying there are a lot of good things going on here.
“Our small rural communities are viable and we just need everybody to remember we are still here. We can take care of ourselves. We know how to do it. We work together very well and we’re grateful to be here. I never thought we would be in this situation where we have a new hotel. To see the way things have switched around here is just amazing,” said Cooper.
She also addressed how well Wright County has melded together people of differing ethnicities, and she is proud of that.
Before Grassley left, Kluss asked him a question that there has been a lot of debate over – What are his thoughts on term limits considering he has been in office for quite a while and “knows the lay of the land?”
Grassley said there have only ever been four votes for term limits in his 40 years in office. Each time he has voted for them being a 12-year limit.
“I don’t see Congress taking that action,” he said.
Grassley concluded by saying “I love my work…and I will continue to work hard for Iowans…don’t lose hope in America.”
