Grassley addresses term limits, open meetings

During Monday’s Capitol Hill Report, Senator Chuck Grassley answered questions regarding term limits, open meetings and his thoughts on the partial shutdown.

Grassley, 92, is currently serving his eighth term and has left open the possibility of running again. However, he said he’s in favor of term limits.

“On two or three occasions, I have had an opportunity to vote for term limits and I voted yes each time,” Grassley said. “It’s been a while since we’ve had such votes, and my votes were for six two-year terms for house members and two six-year terms for senators. In each case, adding up to 12 years the maximum a person can serve at either.”

If these limits had been passed, 46 of the 100 U.S. Senators could no longer serve, and 127 of the 435 Representatives could no longer serve.

Open meetings

During the Senate’s February recess, Grassley started his 46th annual tour of Iowa’s 99 counties, starting with Union County. A majority of these visits are for invited guests, not open to the public.

“I’ve always had a broad approach to Q&As with my constituents,” Grassley said. “At first, some open meeting, yes, but more importantly, as time goes on, I’ve been devoting more time to go to people that can’t take time off work to come to my town meeting.”

Additionally, Grassley said doing this gives him a better cross section of political views.

“What I generally found in 46 years is that open town meetings tend to invite people that are the political left or the political right,” Grassley said. While it’s important to listen to people, it’s also important for me when they ask questions to be able to answer those questions. So I want to emphasize though that the reason I do meetings is because I need to go to the common ordinary people, not just people that are interested in political issues."

Partial shutdown

While many services are still running, the federal government is on a partial shutdown, with Congress unable to agree on funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

“We got an email on that very subject this afternoon, and he said negotiations are still going on between the House and Senate and in the White House with the Democrats on that issue,” Grassley said. “And there hasn’t been any progress made, or at least not that they knew about at the time.”

While Grassley said he understood Democrats’ anger at the way operations were being carried out in Minneapolis, changes have since been made.

“I think the reason the Democrats are holding up Homeland Security is no longer a valid reason considering the fact that the White House has wised up how to enforce immigration law,” Grassley said.