Grassley foes outline plans to labor leaders
ALTOONA - A trio of Democrats who want to replace Sen. Chuck Grassley took their messages to a friendly audience Monday, laying out their plans for working Americans to Iowa labor leaders and activists.
Former U.S. Attorney Roxanne Conlin, former Iowa Rep. Bob Krause and former Iowa Sen. Ton Fiegen paid their respects to the five-term Republican before saying it's time to retire him.
Frequently reminding the union members of the things they didn't like about President George W. Bush, they tied Grassley to many of those policies - the Bush tax cuts, attempts to privatize Social Security, the Medicare prescription drug "doughnut hole" and weaker protection for working people.
Although polling shows Grassley leading any of the three, Conlin said he's becoming his own worst enemy. She cited a recent poll showing Grassley's approval rating is lower than ever.
"I haven't done a thing," she said. "He did that himself."
Much of that stemmed from his town halls meetings last summer "he started talking about pulling the plug on grandma," Conlin said.
"People say he has changed ... he's lost touch," she said.
Krause, Fiegen and Conlin hoped to touch the union members at the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO annual legislative conference because many of them will be leading their locals' election efforts this fall, President Ken Sagar said.
Conlin sought to remind the union members, as well as Grassley, that he was for mandatory health insurance before he was against it and helped deregulate Wall Street before bailing it out.
"He seems to have forgotten a lot of things. Or he is hypocritical," she said. "I won't say which."
The "horrible" economy is a direct result of the policies of Grassley and his Republican colleagues, Conlin said.
"When (Republicans) talk about debt and deficit their pants should start on fire," she said.
Krause called for emergency action on trade policy. Trade agreements, such as NAFTA and WTO, "were put together by people who thought American workers were making too much money," he said. The easy solution was to send the jobs overseas and get cheap goods in return.
However, Krause said, sending jobs overseas creates national defense problems and contributes to global warming.
"It's cheaper, but we're creating our own pollution" because manufacturers in other countries are not as energy-efficient as American factories, he said.
Like the others, Krause called health-care a right and said he supports "Medicare for all."
"That's not possible right now, but I'll take what I can get," he said.
Health-care could be the next stimulus package, Krause said. Spending on nurses, doctors, hospitals and construction of health care facilities would provide an "incredible boost" to the economy, Krause said.
Fiegen, a sometimes college economics instructor, outlined a three-point program of "Fiegenomics" calling for jobs for everyone who wants one, health care for all and a ban on financial piracy.
Fiegen wants a second stimulus bill. Rather than include tax breaks for the wealthy, it should be focused on creating jobs by rebuilding the American infrastructure, such as expanding the electric transmission grid. Now, he said, on any given day many wind turbines in Iowa are idle because the grid can't move electricity where it's needed.
"That's work we need to do and jobs we can create here," the Clarence bankruptcy lawyer said.
His health-care plan would be "Medicare for all." Health-care should be paid for the same way the country pays for the Iraq War, he said - decide what's important and fund a way to pay for it. It shouldn't be paid for by taxing other people's insurance policies, a reference to plans to tax so-called Cadillac plans that cover, among others, union members.
Fiegen wants to break up large financial institutions that took the country hostage.
"Too big to fail is wrong," he said.
Source: Globe Gazette
