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.
The announcement Monday that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to go forward with health-care reform legislation that includes a public option is bad news for everyday Americans, Sen. Chuck Grassley said Tuesday.
Grassley called the public option “another new entitlement on top of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, which are already bankrupt,” adding: ““Can we afford any more entitlements?”
The public option is just the beginning of an eventual government takeover of health insurance, Grassley said, which he contends can only lead to rationing of benefits.
Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning Web site run by journalists at the St. Petersburg Times, concluded earlier this year that rationing is already taking place under the current health care system. There is no reason to believe that practice will end due to health care reforms being debated in Congress, but there is also no reason to believe it will get worse.
Grassley made a similar argument in August when he pointed to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s battle with cancer and declared that the Democratic lawmaker “would not get the care he gets here because of his age. In other words, they’d say ‘well he doesn’t have long to live even if he lived another four to five years.’ They’d say ‘well, we gotta spend money on people who can contribute more to economy.’ It’s a little like people saying when somebody gets to be 85 their life is worth less than when they were 35 and you pull the tubes on them.”
Reid’s plan would include the option for state’s to opt out of the public insurance system, but Grassley said even that isn’t good enough.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s opt in, opt out or some kind of trigger, you still get back to the basic fact it’s a government-run plan that will undermine the market,” Grassley said.
Follow Jason Hancock on Twitter
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter