Conlin rips Grassley on Wall Street
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roxanne Conlin on Wednesday attacked Sen. Charles Grassley's opposition to a Wall Street reform bill.
''It's hypocritical to say the very least,'' she said of her Republican opponent's stance.
Conlin criticized Grassley during a campaign stop at Bloomers on Central, 900 Central Ave. About 35 people attended.
On Wednesday afternoon, Grassley issued a written statement indicating that he will vote against the financial regulation measure recently hammered out by a committee of senators and representatives.
Grassley cited these reasons for opposing the bill:
• It includes additional spending.
• It employs a ''budget gimmick'' using fees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
• It fails to make the financial derivatives market more transparent.
• It fails to end conflicts of interest between credit rating agencies and banks that issue securities.
''It's a bill that most of Wall Street wants passed,'' Grassley said in the statement. ''And that's the last thing Iowans expect in any reform bill.''
During her Fort Dodge visit, Conlin said she thinks Grassley is putting the interests of Wall Street ahead of those of Iowans.
''We have to send someone to Washington who will get up every day worrying about what's happening to the people in Iowa and not worrying about what's happening to big banks on Wall Street,'' she said. ''I'll be that person.''
Conlin said the new health care reform law is ''one of the things that I'm proudest of as a Democrat.''
She added that she wants illegal aliens to have a way to earn American citizenship.
In an interview following her speech, the candidate called for federal government spending on roads, bridges, other infrastructure and green energy as a way to jumpstart the economy.
''We cannot solve the deficit until we get people back to work,'' she said.
Although Republicans have claimed that the stimulus plan enacted last year was a failure, Conlin said that the program created 2.5 million jobs.
Her economic proposals also include allowing businesses to immediately deduct the cost of newly purchased manufacturing equipment from their federal taxes.
She said she also wants to institute federal tax credits for small businesses that hire more people.
Conlin said the federal government should curtail offshore oil drilling ''until we know how to do it.''
''I'm horrified by what's happening in the Gulf,'' she said.
In that interview, Conlin also said she thinks President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat, deserves some criticism related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. She said that when Obama and his advisers took office in January 2009, they knew that regulators in the Department of the Interior were ''literally sleeping.''
''That needed to be fixed and it wasn't,'' she said
She added that Obama administration officials waived laws that allowed the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to be used. The rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and starting the oil spill.
