Ernst meets residents at town hall

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) visited Fairfield Friday afternoon for a town hall with her constituents.

Ernst spent a few minutes reviewing legislation before the Senate, then took questions from the audience. She took notes about the stories she heard from the audience, which she promised to relay to other senators when discussing a bill. For instance, Jefferson County Supervisor Dee Sandquist told Ernst the county is considering borrowing $6.7 million to pay for roads, something it almost never does since it's a pay-as-you-go county.

'Many of our roads were built in the late 1970s and 1980s, and are falling apart,” Sandquist said. 'Anything you can do at the federal level to help with infrastructure would be appreciated.”

Ernst is on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, and mentioned it was looking into how the federal government could fund an infrastructure bill a couple of years ago. She said the members couldn't agree on how to pay for it, and the infrastructure bill got put on the back burner. However, she said this most recent congress elected in 2018 seems more enthusiastic about infrastructure as a priority.

'This is an area where we can come together in a bipartisan manner, it's just going to be tougher with the funding,” she said. 'But we agree that we need to invest in infrastructure.”

Yemen

Ernst fielded a couple of questions about the U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led war in Yemen. According to the BBC, the conflict in Yemen is between two groups, one loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the other loyal to his deputy and successor, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who came to power in 2011 following a wave of political revolutions throughout the Middle East.

Since then, those loyal to Saleh, plus a Shia rebel group in the north of the country called the Houthi Movement, tried to take control of the entire country, forcing Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia in March 2015. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of backing the rebels, which Iran denies. Nevertheless, worried about Iran's influence, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of eight mostly Sunni Arab states in a war to restore Hadi to power. The United States, United Kingdom and France have provided logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition.

The United Nations reports that, in the past four years, at least 7,000 civilians have been killed and another 11,000 injured, with 65 percent of the deaths attributed to the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. The U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project estimates the number of dead much higher at over 67,000.

Since the war has disrupted food supplies, more than 3 million people are acutely malnourished. The charity Save the Children estimates that 85,000 children may have died from acute malnutrition between April 2015 and October 2018.

In March, the U.S. Senate voted 54-46 to end America's involvement in the war. The House of Representatives followed suit, voting 247-175 to do the same earlier this month. However, President Donald Trump vetoed the bill. Ernst and fellow Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley voted against the bill to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition.

Resident Margaret Dwyer asked Ernst if she would 'be a leader in Congress and stand up to the president” by overriding his veto, which requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber. Ernst, without mentioning her own vote on the subject, said the resolution on Yemen would not likely return to the Senate for another vote, because of a lack of will to override the president's veto.

Ernst mentioned that the U.S. is winding down its involvement in the conflict anyway. For instance, in November, the U.S. stopped refueling aircraft in the Saudi-led coalition.

The Ledger asked Ernst after the meeting why the U.S. has admitted so few refugees from Yemen, given that the country is facing near-famine conditions. Ernst said refugee settlement is a matter handled by the State Department, not Congress.

According to the Center for Global Development, the U.S. is admitting far fewer refugees under the Trump Administration. The U.S. admitted about 85,000 refugees in fiscal year 2016, but only about 22,500 in fiscal year 2018. The U.S. has not admitted any refugees from Yemen thus far in 2019, and resettled two Yemeni refugees in 2018.

Yemen is one of the countries included the latest version of the administration's travel ban, the others being Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Venezuela and North Korea. People from these countries face special hurdles in entering the U.S.

Tariffs

Ernst said that she is not afraid to push back against President Trump when she feels he is wrong. She gave an example of tariffs the administration placed on steel coming from Mexico and Canada, based on section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. That section of the act gives the president the power to impose tariffs on goods in the interest of national security.

'I don't think steel from Mexico or Canada constitutes a national security threat,” Ernst said.

Ernst and fellow Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) have drafted a bill to take away the president's power to determine what constitutes a national security threat worthy of tariffs. Under the bill, that power would be vested in the Department of Defense.

Russia

Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated whether the Russian government attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his report, published last week, Mueller wrote that Russia hacked into an unnamed Florida county's computer network prior to the 2016 election, and planted malware in an election equipment manufacturer's system. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told the New York Times Saturday that Russian hackers were in a position to change voter roll data, but that he did not believe they acted on that access.

In August 2017, President Trump signed into law a set of sanctions targeting Russia for allegations of election interference. At the same time, Trump has stated that he has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin if he meddled in the 2016 elections, and that Putin has denied it. Trump told reporters in June 2018 after meeting with Putin that he believed Putin was telling the truth.

Thus far, President Trump has not publicly condemned Russia for the hacking allegation contained in the Mueller report. The Ledger asked Ernst why Trump has been slow to condemn Russia on this matter, and Ernst said she didn't know. She said she didn't understand the relationship Trump has with Putin.

'I don't agree that we should interact with President Putin unless he's willing to say he will stop all interference,” Ernst said. 'I have strong feelings about Russia. I just visited the eastern front of Ukraine, where Russians are killing Ukrainians in occupied territory. Russia is bad. We should never trust them.”

Cost of pharmaceuticals

In recent years, the cost of prescription medications has skyrocketed, Ernst said. Two people in her family suffer from juvenile diabetes, and she is well aware of how the price of insulin has risen sharply.

'I understand how that impacts a person's quality of life,” she said. 'You absolutely have to have those medications to live a productive life.”

Ernst has co-sponsored five bills dealing with controlling the cost of medication. She mentioned that when a new prescription drug is developed, it is covered by a patent for so many years. At the end of the patent period, other companies will develop similar products, generic drugs. However, Congress has learned that drug developers are paying other companies not to develop generic drugs.

'[Customers] end up paying more for a longer period of time for that brand name pharmaceutical,” she said.

Climate change

Ernst fielded a few questions from the public on climate change. Resident Mary Tarnoff said she was concerned about the lack of progress on the subject, and said the extreme weather events leading to flooding in southwest Iowa are just the beginning. Resident Inga Frick asked Ernst, 'Are we happy with the status quo on climate change?”

In response to Frick's question, Ernst remarked, 'If I was, I wouldn't sponsor bills on conservation.”

Ernst said Iowa is setting a good example by being a leader in wind energy, and remarked on the value of solar energy in Jefferson County especially. She talked about how, as a member of the Agriculture Committee, she has promoted water conservation and efforts to improve soil quality through buffer strips, cover crops and bioreactors.

'As far as the climate debate, what we don't want is heavy-handed federal overreach telling every individual what to do,” she said. 'We can encourage and incentivize actions, and that is where we are in Iowa.”

Ernst cited the 'Green New Deal,” a set of proposals sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), as an example of heavy-handed overreach. Ocasio-Cortez and Markey wrote a resolution outlining the plan's goals for the next 10 years, which included meeting all the country's power demand through renewable sources.

Ernst remarked that several Democrats, including most running for president, have endorsed the Green New Deal. However, when Republican Senators called for an early vote on the resolution on March 26, all Democrats voted 'present,” resulting in the resolution's failure 57-0.

According to Reuters, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) forced a vote on the plan before it had been debated in Congress, prompting Democrats to vote 'present” in protest of the move.

Transgender people

Resident Marshan Roth said she was concerned about allowing transgender women, who were born male, to compete against other women in sports. She mentioned that the first- and second-place finishers in the 100 meter dash at the Connecticut girls' track and field state championship last year were transgender students. Roth said she feels such athletes have an unfair advantage, and asked Ernst for her thoughts on the matter.

Ernst did not reply to the specific issue of transgender people in sports, but remarked that the Trump Administration has banned transgender people from joining the military.

According to National Public Radio, 14,000 members of the military are transgender. They will be able to continue serving openly, but must present a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria. If not, they must serve under the gender assigned to them at birth, or leave the armed forces.

People who have received medical treatment – either through hormones or surgery – to become a different gender than the one assigned at birth will not be able to join the military.