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.
It’s the nominees themselves, and not the stringent requirements, that are holding up confirmation of U.S. Treasury Department officials, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a statement Wednesday.
The senator was responding to a report by the non-partisan watchdog Partnership for Public Service said that the Finance Committee’s demands for extensive tax records and audits of Treasury nominees has helped delay their Senate confirmation. Grassley is the ranking Republican on that committee.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)
The report says, “A number of reasons have been cited for the hold-up of nominees. In some instances, the Senate Finance Committee demanded extensive tax records going back many years and audits that ended up sidetracking some nominees and delaying others for Treasury posts.”
Grassley called this line of thinking “a myth,” saying the process has been the exact same since 2001 “and maybe even before that.”
“Occasionally a nominee delays giving responses to the committee’s questions, or gives responses that generate more questions,” Grassley said. “That stretches out the vetting process. But it’s a myth that the committee is asking harder questions of Obama nominees than prior administration nominees over the last nine years. The fact is, we’ve seen more and bigger tax-related problems associated with the current administration nominees than we’ve seen in the past.”
President Barack Obama’s administration has seen most of the Treasury Department’s 33 high-level nominees stalled in confirmation, including the agency’s secretary, Tim Geithner. Grassley personally held up four Treasury nominees in late December, according to D.C. newspaper The Hill.
And Grassley recently held up the confirmation of four nominees, ones for Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, assistant treasury for financial markets and deputy undersecretary for international finance. Obama’s pick for the international affairs post at Treasury, Lael Brainard, has come under scrutiny for her tax returns.
Grassley said he would allow the nominations to be considered just before the holiday break, but the full Senate, away from Washington since Christmas Eve, has yet to take them up.
Overall, the Partnership for Public Service found that out of 500 top-tier positions in the federal government, just 305 of those were filled and another 67 had been nominated and were awaiting Senate confirmation.
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