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.
Democrats may push a bad health care reform bill just for the sake of positive public relations, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said Thursday on a conference call with reporters.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.com)
While he doubts Democrats can get a deal done before President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, “they’re going to really try to get it done.”
“But I’m telling you, when you look back at how many months the two committees in the Senate worked on it, and it took [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid six weeks to put a bill together between those two bills, and he did that in the secrecy of his office, and now they’re doing it in secret between the House and the Senate, I think they’ve got a big job,” he said. “They may do it, and they may not care if they do it right, just ’cause they want to get it done for public relations’ purposes real early.”
Democrats are working to merge very different versions of health care reform legislation passed by the U.S. House and Senate. Congress Daily reported early Thursday that Democrats could have a merged health reform bill to the Congressional Budget Office this weekend, much quicker than originally predicted.
Grassley said because Democrats have decided to shut Republicans out of the negotiation process, “there wouldn’t be much reason for any Republican to vote for it.”
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