Newspaper Names Grassley Hardest Working Member of Congress

Press Release

Senator Chuck Grassley today was named the hardest working member of Congress in The Hill newspaper, based on a survey of lawmakers, aides and other officials.

The Hill wrote that Grassley's "work on government oversight remains consistent regardless of which party controls 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

Here's a link to The Hill's feature today.

Today's first-place listing follows Grassley being named number 16 on a list of 100 most influential people in business ethics for being "a leading voice in the Senate speaking out against corruption and financial fraud." In December, the Ethisphere Institute said, "Even before the financial crisis of last year, Grassley's name always seemed to come up in financial fraud stories. He is aware of what's going on and is aggressively going after those that commit fraud."

Here is the link to the ethics listing.

Grassley has conducted significant oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement work. Earlier this year, the SEC settled a $28 million hedge fund insider trading case involving allegations Grassley helped to expose three years ago. The settlement vindicated Grassley's criticism of the SEC for firing the attorney who developed the case and then blew the whistle to Grassley's office about his SEC supervisors putting up roadblocks to an aggressive investigation of the hedge fund based on one witness' "political clout."

Grassley also has conducted some of the most aggressive oversight of the government's implementation of the financial bailout, including executive compensation, severance payouts, and documentation of how taxpayer dollars have been used. Grassley worked to establish an independent Inspector General to oversee the program and successfully strengthened the watchdog's power when the program was altered after enactment. This year, Grassley exposed the fact that GM in fact "paid back" its taxpayer-funded loan with other taxpayer dollars, despite an extensive public relations campaign by the automaker and Treasury Department that the bailout had been paid back "in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles."

Since 2007, Grassley has campaigned for transparency of financial ties between the drug and medical device industries and physician researchers. He won passage of a legislative reform to require public disclosure of payments given to physicians by industry. Last month, the National Institutes of Health issued new draft policies in response to efforts by Grassley to establish accountability with financial relationships among the institutions and individuals conducting $24 billion a year in taxpayer-funded medical research.

In addition to other efforts for transparency and accountability at the Food and Drug Administration and with inspection and certification of America's nursing homes, Grassley also has reviewed the way that the laws governing the tax-exempt sector have kept pace with the dramatic expansion of the nonprofit sector, as a matter of tax fairness. His oversight has included nonprofit hospitals, the American Red Cross, The Nature Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution and university endowments, where he has worked to see that tax-preferred dollars go to help lower tuition for students and their parents.

Throughout the federal bureaucracy, including the Department of Justice and FBI, Grassley takes on waste, fraud and abuse and works to increase access to information, saying "the public's business ought to be public."

Grassley is the Senate author of the 1986 whistleblower provisions to the federal False Claims Act. The provisions help to expose and stop corporate fraud against the government. The total amount recovered through the False Claims Act since the 1986 provisions were signed into law is now more than $22 billion. He has won subsequent passage of legislation to apply whistleblower protections to private-sector employees who identify corporate fraud as occurred with Enron. This year, he won passage of legislation to give similar whistleblower protections to employees of credit-rating agencies who identify wrongdoing. The cozy relationship between credit-rating agencies and the financial industry was a significant factor leading to the financial crisis of 2008.

Other legislative victories for Grassley include passage of the biggest tax relief bill in a generation with the 2001 bill to lower marginal rates and create the first-ever 10 percent bracket for lower-income taxpayers. The bill created the tax deduction for tuition, secured the tax deductibility of interest on student loans and made tax-free savings plans for college a permanent part of the tax code. Separately, Grassley authored the first-ever tax credit for wind energy in 1992 and, since then, he has secured numerous extensions and expansions of tax incentives for conservation and renewable energy including ethanol, biodiesel and biomass.

In 2003, Grassley sponsored the Medicare overhaul bill that updated the program and created the Medicare prescription drug program. Grassley has worked to protect and encourage retirement savings with the pension system reform he coauthored in 2005. He's worked to combat the spread of methamphetamine, safeguard the farm program for family farmers, strengthen VA programs for veterans in rural areas, and help parents with children with disabilities access health care. Legislation first authored by Grassley in 2008 became law and represented a massive overhaul of the foster care and adoption system, making it easier for kids in foster care to be placed in permanent, loving homes. It was Grassley legislation that made the health care reform enacted earlier this year apply to members of Congress, in the same way a bill he got passed in 1995 applied to Congress for the first time 12 major civil rights, labor and employment laws.

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