Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) faced a committee conundrum last week after news emerged that U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) was defecting from the Republican Party and becoming a Democrat.
Specter’s switch would leave a vacancy in the Ranking Member position on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley, currently serving the last two years of his term as Ranking Member on the Finance Committee, was next in line for the Judiciary slot, but he would have had to resign the Finance leadership slot this year to get it.
With President Barack Obama’s health care reform proposals being run through the Finance Committee, its Ranking Member position had become the hottest ticket in town. (Of course, with Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s impending resignation, the Judiciary Committee was looking good, too.) If Grassley didn’t resign and take the Judiciary slot, observers said, another Republican would have filled it, and Iowa’s senior senator would not have had a crack at it until 2014.
So Grassley had to make his decision: either keep Finance and give up Judiciary, or take Judiciary and give up the position of GOP point-person on health care. In the end, he figured out a way to get both.
In a deal announced today, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) will take the Ranking Member slot on Judiciary for only two years, at which point Grassley will take over for him. The Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill reports:
Sessions and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reached the deal that will allow the Alabama Republican to take over for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), whose departure from the GOP last week left the committee without a ranking member.
Under terms of the deal, Sessions will serve as ranking member until the 112th Congress, when he will take over the ranking member post on the Senate Budget Committee. Current Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is retiring at the end of the 111th Congress.
Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, will then become ranking member on the Judiciary Committee.
Last week, Grassley had enlisted the help of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in positioning himself for the top slot on the committee. Under the deal floated then, Hatch would have taken over Judiciary for the remainder of the 111th, with Grassley taking the helm once his tenure on Finance expired.
The seven Republicans who remain on the Judiciary Committee after Specter’s departure will meet to vote on Sessions’s ascension early this week. Once they do, the decision goes to the full Republican Conference, which usually ratifies decisions the committee makes. Sources could not recall a ranking member vote made by a committee that was not, in the end, ratified by the full conference.
Earlier: Grassley hopes to have committee cake, eat it too
Update: As a commenter pointed out, and as I should have noted, Grassley faces a campaign for reelection in 2010. In the somewhat unlikely event that he loses, this plan will be for naught.
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