Grassely holds town hall meeting in Mt. Pleasant

MT. PLEASANT — During a visit to Henry County, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley discussed a wide-range of topics such as rural internet access, imports and exports with countries like China, renewable energy, poverty literature and even the new movie Sound of Freedom with residents.

As part of his 99-county tour, Grassley stopped in Mt. Pleasant, Thursday, July 6 for a town hall meeting held at Access Energy Cooperative.

While Grassley made a brief opening statement, he used most of the town hall meeting time to field questions from attendees.

“I have just finished reading ‘Poverty by America’ by Matthew Desmond and my daughter studied at Washington University with Robert Wright,” one gentleman began as he stood to speak to Grassley. “They are two of the most authorities on poverty in America and I wonder if anyone on your staff or you read books by these authors which focus on the myth of poverty and offer solutions, none of which I noticed in any legislation that is being proposed.”

While Grassley stated he had not read anything by those particular authors, he did encourage the gentleman to reach out to his staff and give them the information.

Later, Grassley addressed some concerns about poverty as he discussed workforce development.

“For the quality of the workforce, I would say giving Pell Grants to people that are not getting degrees,” Grassley commented. “We need to make Pell Grants available to people that are getting certificates, too.”

“We need to produce a solid workforce by helping people get training,” he said.

“The other thing would be, we have this policy within our welfare system that if you make $1 more than what the welfare allow, you lose everything,” Grassley said. “We have a cliff going, right now. If you go above that, you just fall off.”

“It should be when you go into the workforce, maybe initially you lose 10% and then you make more money, you lose 20%, but as people go up in the workforce, then you gradually reduce their food stamps, their Medicaid, whatever else help they’re getting from the government,” he said.

“People know that the government programs are there,” Grassley explained. “It may be a life of poverty, but if you’re going to get out of poverty they need to get into the world of work. So, we want to encourage people to go to work, but they ain’t going to go to work if they’re going to lose all their safety.”

When another asked about rural internet access Grassley spoke about voting for an infrastructure bill.

According to Grassley, the bill passed approximately two years ago to distribute the federal gas tax which would help with this issue.

“I think that money just is going out,” he said. “The reason it didn’t get out even though this bill passed almost two years ago is because the maps that showed underserved and unserved areas were not every accurate. So, we made sure that those maps were updated so that e could put emphasis upon unserved and underserved areas.”

“Now, you aren’t going to get service tomorrow,” Grassley said.

Another constituent expressed concern about the country’s dependence on oil and coal for energy.

“We are in a building that provides us with electricity, thank you very much, I like to have lights and fans, but we’re polluting our planet Earth and it’s the only one we’ve got,” she said. “We’ve gotta quit buying it from our enemies. We’ve got to quit drilling for it … I don’t see any reason why we need to keep drilling for more oil. There are other ways to make electricity.”

“China has put more coal fired plants online last year than they did the year before,” Grassley responded. “We're at the point where our Greenhouse Gas emissions are what they were in 2005. We're doing better than any other country in the world.”

As conversations pertaining to alternative energy options began to wrap up another gentleman stood to speak to Grassley.

“There are many things happening in the United States that are problems we can talk about right now,” he began. “I went and watched the Sound of Freedom yesterday.”

“If you don’t know what the Sound of Freedom is, it is about our national, our worldwide crisis about child trafficking,” he explained. “The movie itself took five years to get to where it is today. It was done five years ago and had to go through so much, but I don’t know what this is, but why would a movie trying to save our children take so long to get to the community?”

When he asked the room if anyone had heard of the Sound of Freedom on the mainstream media, many responded with “no.”

“It is a true evil in this world what is going on with child trafficking, and it’s only getting worse,” he said.

“It’s not just an American issue,” Grassley responded.

After taking a few additional questions and comments, one woman fervently thanked Grassley for his service and the town hall concluded.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com