WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa today said a report from a bipartisan tax working group he co-chaired reflects input he received from Iowans on the need to consolidate or otherwise simplify the tax code.

"Iowans are frustrated with the complexity of the tax code," Grassley said.  "Getting help from the IRS is often impossible, and identity theft is an increasing concern.  Our working group presented options for cleaning up the tax code and tax administration in key areas.  I'm grateful for the ideas and concerns I heard from Iowans to inform this work."

Grassley was one of three co-chairs of a bipartisan working group tasked with individual income tax reform.  The leaders of the Finance Committee, with jurisdiction over tax policy, convened the working groups and received reports from each group this week.

The individual income tax reform working group focused on options for potential bipartisan agreement in three areas:  charitable giving, higher education and tax administration including identity theft.  The group's report is available here.  More information on the Finance Committee's tax reform effort is available here.

Earlier this year, Grassley conducted a survey of Iowans to collect their ideas and priorities for tax reform.  He also joined a forum with tax professionals and business leaders in Des Moines with the same goal.  Iowans expressed the need for tax simplification and fairness.

Last month, Grassley introduced comprehensive legislation to improve customer service at the IRS, create new taxpayer protections, and update and strengthen existing taxpayer protections.  The Taxpayer Bill of Rights Enhancement Act of 2015 comes amid gross mismanagement and inappropriate actions by IRS employees that have shaken what little confidence taxpayers may have had in the agency.

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WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is urging fair treatment of the wind energy production tax credit whenever the committee of jurisdiction takes up expired or expiring tax provisions.

"Good tax policy requires certainty that can only come from long-term predictable tax laws," Grassley wrote to Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee.  "Businesses need certainty in the tax code so they can plan and invest accordingly.  And, while I look forward to working with my colleagues in the future to enact tax reform and put an end to the headaches and uncertainty created by the regular expiration of tax provisions, right now our focus must be on extending current expired or expiring provisions to give us room to work toward that goal."

Grassley's letter noted that opponents of renewable energy single out such provisions for removal while overlooking the many generous, permanent provisions benefiting other forms of energy.  Grassley has detailed the many provisions benefiting the oil, gas and nuclear industries in remarks on the Senate floor.   His letter said Iowa ranks third in the nation in terms of installed wind capacity, providing more than 28 percent of Iowa's electricity, while supporting more than 6,000 jobs.  Nationally, the wind energy industry supports more than 73,000 jobs.  "With jobs and the economy at the top of Americans' concerns, it would be a travesty for our new majority to put these jobs at risk," Grassley wrote.

Grassley also wrote that the wind energy industry is the only industry that has put out a phase-out plan for its tax credit.  He said such a phase-out should occur in the context of comprehensive tax reform, where all energy tax provisions are on the table.

Grassley authored and won enactment of the first-ever wind energy production tax credit in 1992.  The incentive was designed to give wind energy the ability to compete against coal-fired and nuclear energy and helped to launch the wind energy industry.  He has worked to extend the credit ever since.

Grassley is a senior member and former chairman of the Finance Committee.

His letter is available here

WASHINGTON–Senator Grassley made the following statement after a hearing today held by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on the impacts of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), also known as avian influenza.

"The hearing was productive and provided an opportunity to hear directly from producers impacted by this outbreak.  We were able to learn more about the effort to contain the disease from both producers and the government, and there were some clear areas for improvement identified.  We also discussed what can be done to prevent the spread of the disease in the future.  Many important issues were put on the table that will help us going forward in case an outbreak occurs again," Grassley said.

Two Iowans provided testimony at the hearing: Mr. James Dean, chairman of the United Egg Producers in Sioux Center, and Mr. Brad Moline, manager and owner of Moline Farms, LLC in Manson.  This hearing came after a request by Senators Grassley and Joni Ernst to Chairman Pat Roberts for the committee to hold a hearing on the federal government`s response to the outbreak.

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Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa today made the following comment on the Internal Revenue Service's 2014 whistleblower program report to Congress. Grassley authored the 2006 whistleblower office improvements.

"The point of the whistleblower office changes was to encourage the IRS to work as closely as possible with whistleblowers to rein in tax cheats and return money to the U.S. Treasury.  It seems the IRS has made some progress but there's always danger of moving backward if the IRS' focus changes or if whistleblowers stop coming forward out of fear of poor results, such as the seeming lack of urgency in the processing of awards.  I'll continue to look for progress and even more evidence that the IRS is offering a welcome mat to whistleblowers."

Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

For the Congressional Record

The nomination of Kara Stoll & the general judicial progress

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Tonight the Senate will vote on the nomination of Kara Stoll to be a Circuit Judge for the Federal Circuit.

I offer my congratulations to Ms. Stoll on what will likely be her confirmation tonight.

I do want to say that I've been hearing some complaints from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle concerning the pace of judicial nominees.

But my Democratic colleagues weren't complaining in 2007, during President Bush's seventh year of his presidency. At this point in 2007, President Bush had had only 279 judicial nominees confirmed.

Today, after the Senate confirms Ms. Stoll's nomination, President Obama will have a total of 312 judicial nominees confirmed thus far.

That's 33 more judicial nominees confirmed. So, this President and his judicial nominees are being treated as fairly, if not more fairly, than the last President.

We're also moving judicial nominees in Committee at about the same pace as we did at this point in President Bush's presidency.

Up to this point in 2007, the committee had held five hearings for 17 nominees. This year, the Senate has held six nominations hearings for 17 nominees, including hearings for the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General. And we will likely be adding to that number this month.

Furthermore, and I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. The Senate would've confirmed several more nominees this year had the Democrats not made an unprecedented move and confirmed 11 judicial nominees at the end of a lame-duck Congress.

In 2006, the Senate returned 13 judicial nominees to the President. Those nominees were then re-nominated in 2007, and confirmed in the new Congress.

Had Democrats followed standard Senate practice, we would've voted on those 11 nominees at the beginning of this year just as the Committee did with the nominees that were resubmitted in 2007.

The bottom line is the Senate Judiciary Committee is treating the President's nominees extremely fairly and there shouldn't be any complaining about following the same standard we did in 2007.

I congratulate Ms. Stoll on her pending nomination and I yield the floor.

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(Washington, DC) - U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Congressmen Charles W. Boustany, Jr., MD, (R-LA) and Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced bipartisan companion language in the House (H.R. 2911) and Senate (S. 1697) known as the Small Business Healthcare Relief Act to roll back existing Treasury Department guidance issued under the authority of the Affordable Care Act prohibiting the use of Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs). Boustany and Thompson introduced the legislation last Congress.

 

On September 13, 2013, Treasury issued guidance disallowing employers from using stand-alone HRAs to reimburse employees for healthcare-related expenses, stating these arrangements did not satisfy the Affordable Care Act's minimum benefit and annual dollar cap requirements for health insurance plans offered by employers. As a result, employers that continue to offer HRAs would be subject to a $100 per day per employee penalty, totaling up to $36,500 over the course of the year. After Boustany questioned Secretary Jack Lew on this issue in a Ways & Means hearing on February 3, 2015, Treasury announced on February 18 that it would delay enforcement of this guidance and resulting penalties until July 1, 2015.

 

Grassley, Heitkamp, Boustany, and Thompson's legislation restores flexibility and choice into the marketplace by:

 

Ø  Ensuring that small businesses and local municipalities with fewer than 50 employees are allowed to continue using pre-tax dollars to give employees a defined contribution for healthcare expenses

Ø  Allowing employees to use HRA funds to purchase health coverage on the individual market, as well as for qualified out-of-pocket medical expenses if the employee has qualified health coverage

Ø  Protecting employers from being financially penalized for providing this cost-sharing option to employees

 

Grassley said: "I've heard from farmers, small business owners and accountants who are worried about getting hit with a penalty for something they've done for a long time without any controversy. It doesn't make sense to tell small employers they can't help their employees get health insurance. Why disrupt something that worked? Our bill puts this provision back to what it was so farmers and small businesses can use this option as they see fit."

 

Heitkamp said: "Our bipartisan bill would make a needed fix to restore the ability for small businesses, which sometimes can't afford to provide health benefits? for employees, to help their workers purchase coverage using HRAs. That just makes sense. I have long said some parts of the health care reform law work, but we need to improve the pieces that should work better for families and small businesses - and this bill continues those efforts."


Boustany said: "Restoring choice and affordability in the healthcare marketplace is the key to driving down costs and improving accessibility for consumers. Using Healthcare Reimbursement Arrangements is a creative approach that allows employees to select healthcare plans that are best tailored to fit their needs. Our common-sense bipartisan legislation frees employers to provide their employees with options that will put the individual in charge."

 

Thompson said: "This common-sense, bipartisan bill is about choice and affordability. It will allow small businesses to offer Healthcare Reimbursement Arrangements to their workers so they can choose a quality, affordable health insurance plan that fits their individual budget and healthcare needs."

 

Bruce Josten, Executive Vice President for Government Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said: "The U.S. Chamber has long supported flexibility in benefit offerings, including the ability to offer stand-alone HRAs to help employees pay for health care coverage and services. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation marks an important first step in returning flexibility and choice to all businesses and their employees, and if enacted, would restore appropriate common-sense options to small business and their employees."

 

Tom Woods, Chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Blue Springs, MO, said: "This common-sense legislation is particularly important for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Even though these employers cannot offer a health insurance plan due to prohibitive costs, they would still be able to help make healthcare more affordable for their workers. We urge Congress to swiftly pass this bipartisan legislation so that more employers can help their workers meet the high cost of medical premiums or out-of-pocket expenses."

 

Kevin Kuhlman, Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Federation of Independence Business (NFIB), said: "If there's an opportunity for a bipartisan improvement toward affordable healthcare, this has to be it. There's no real justification for penalizing small businesses that do what the law's strongest supporters claim to want, which is to help employees obtain coverage or pay medical bills.  This is a rigid and thoughtless bureaucratic rule that undermines the purpose of the law, and it ought to be repealed immediately."

 

Bob Stallman, President of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), said: "Farmers regularly take on the roles of CEO, CFO, and HR director, in addition to caring for their land and animals. This legislation would give farm and ranch businesses, which are largely family-run, the flexibility they need to offer health care benefits in a way that makes the most sense for their employees and their businesses."

 

Katie Vlietstra Wonnenberg, Vice President of Government Relations & Public Affairs for the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) said: "We applaud the introduction of the Small Business Healthcare Relief Act, bipartisan, bicameral legislation championed by Reps. Charles Boustany (R-La.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), as a common-sense solution to ensuring America's smallest businesses with fewer than 50 employees have access to Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs)."

 

Joel White, President of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage (CAHC), a multi-stakeholder advocacy alliance, said: "The IRS has issued a rule that penalizes small employers for doing the right thing - providing help to employees. Employers are struggling with how to maintain employee health benefits in the current costly, burdensome, and uncertain environment. This legislation takes a good first step in addressing the negative consequences of the rule.  Employers shouldn't be penalized for helping employees better afford their coverage. Congress needs to pass this bill as quickly as possible."

 

Chris Byrd, Executive Vice President of healthcare software and payment solutions company Evolution1, a WEX company, said: "We are delighted bipartisan legislation has been introduced to permit small businesses to assist their employees with health insurance and out-of-pocket costs without being subject to egregious penalties of $36,500 per employee."

 

Supporters of the legislation include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association for Towns and Townships, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the National Federation of Business (NFIB), the Small Business Majority, the National Association for the Self Employed (NASE), the Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage (CAHC), the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), and the National Retail Federation (NRF).

 

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WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley is asking key government agencies what they're doing to prevent and punish Medicaid dental fraud, including billing for unnecessary treatments for children, in light of inspector general audits and related media reports documenting worrisome practices.

"Some dentists are clearly performing unwanted and unneeded medical procedures on children without the consent of parents and bilking Medicaid for the privilege," Grassley wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson.

Grassley's letters cited Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General audits of questionable billing practices for Medicaid pediatric dental services in four states: California, New York, Louisiana and Indiana.  All of these audits identified questionable billing practices that suggest Medicaid dental providers are performing medically unnecessary procedures on children.   Grassley wrote that this conclusion has been echoed by a variety of news sources that have reported on troubling practices performed by dentists treating children in Medicaid, including a Florida-based dentist who allegedly subjected hundreds of children to unneeded tooth extractions, improper dental fixtures, and other troublesome procedures.

Grassley asked Lynch for the number of criminal and civil fraud referrals from the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General related to Medicaid dentistry chains in the past five years, with a listing of the referrals by state and how each criminal and civil case was resolved; details of the number of ongoing Department of Justice Medicaid dental chain fraud investigations by state; and a description of the Department of Justice's plan to address the findings by the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General that indicate health care fraud in the context of dental procedures provided to children in Medicaid.

Grassley asked Levinson for the steps the inspector general's office will take, or has already taken, to increase the auditing of dentistry offices that are recipients of federal dollars; the number of criminal and civil fraud referrals from the inspector general's office to the Department of Justice relating to Medicaid dentistry chain activity in the past five years; details of the Medicaid dentistry audits the office performed by state in the past five years, with a note on whether the audit resulted in criminal or civil referral to the Department of Justice; the number of ongoing Medicaid dental fraud investigations by state; and a description of the progress on following up on billing fraud and unnecessary procedures in Medicaid pediatric dental services.

In 2013, following a year-long investigation, Grassley and then-Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana issued a report and recommendations urging the administration to ban dental clinics from participating in the Medicaid program if the dental clinics circumvent state laws designed to ensure only licensed dentists own dental practices to prevent substandard care.  In 2014, the inspector general moved to disqualify a firm from Medicaid.

Grassley's latest letters are available here and here.

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WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley is asking the key government agencies involved for a full accounting of their actions to approve a controversial uranium deal, despite disapproval of similar foreign takeovers and amid potential conflicts of interest concerns over millions of dollars in financial donations to the family foundation linked to one of the designated decision-making agencies, the State Department under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"When millions of dollars flow to decision makers who have substantial discretion to provide support for or against approval of controversial transactions, public confidence in the integrity of the process requires a commitment to transparency and responsiveness to oversight inquiries," Grassley wrote to the agencies.

Grassley is seeking details behind the acquisition of U.S.-based uranium assets by a Russian government-owned company.  Such acquisitions are reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), whose membership includes the secretary of State and of which the Treasury secretary is the chair.   The purpose of such reviews is to ensure that national security is not undermined by transactions that result in control of U.S.-based assets, such as uranium, by a foreign entity.  CFIUS approved the uranium deal, despite having denied similar controversial transactions.

While Hillary Clinton was secretary of State and during critical stages of the uranium deal and CFIUS review process, the Clinton Foundation accepted multiple donations of millions of dollars from parties with an interest in the uranium deal, according to media reports.

"It's unclear what led CFIUS to approve the uranium company transaction and whether the conflicts of interest involving the secretary of State and her family foundation were disclosed and vetted at the time," Grassley said.

Grassley asked a series of detailed questions about these concerns to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Jose W. Fernandez, the State Department designee to CFIUS during Clinton's tenure.

Grassley's letters are available here, here, here and here.

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Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa today made the following comment on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) release of new data on the money paid by drug and medical device makers to doctors and teaching hospitals for product research, compensation for consulting, speaking engagements and other purposes.  The database was made possible under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which Grassley co-authored and saw through to enactment into law.  The 2014 data includes information about 11.4 million financial transactions attributed to over 600,000 physicians and more than 1,100 teaching hospitals, totaling $6.49 billion.  This is the second year of data collection.

"CMS has worked and continues to work to fulfill the Sunshine Act and also has taken action to make Medicare payment data more transparent.  There's a strong public interest in knowing where this money goes and why.  Consumers, researchers and other members of the public benefit from disclosure.   The Sunshine Act is working as intended to shine light on part of the health care system that many of us didn't know much about before."

More information on CMS' release today is available here and here.

Prepared Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry

Hearing on Country of Origin Labeling

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this important hearing on Country of Origin Labeling.  I would also like to thank Craig Hill, President of the Iowa Farm Bureau, for testifying here today.

I have supported COOL since it was first adopted during the 2002 Farm Bill.  My support for COOL stems from wanting to provide consumers additional information about the meat they consume.  If we can know the country of origin for every T-shirt in this country, we should also be able to know where our meat is coming from.

We must be true to our obligations at the World Trade Organization.  The WTO has ruled against the current COOL law four times.  I think we are past the point of debating IF our COOL law is going to change.

The question we are debating is HOW the current COOL law is going to change.  I'm not ready to eliminate COOL altogether for pork and beef.  I think we can find a way forward on COOL that ends the mandatory segregation under current law which is the key point of the WTO case.

As proof that there is a way forward on COOL, I would simply point out that Canada has a voluntary "Product of Canada" label. That label even has its own qualifying statement outlining the fine details that must be met in order for the product of Canada label to be used.

I fail to see how Canada can have a voluntary program with clear stipulations but we cannot. 

Beyond that point, I have heard rumblings that a voluntary program is not flexible enough.  To people with those concerns I simply ask- how do you get more flexible than voluntary?

A voluntary program for beef and pork is something we need to consider.  There are undoubtedly details to be worked through, but I must say I find it hard to believe we cannot set some basic criteria for a voluntary label.

Chairman Roberts, Ranking Member Stabenow, I look forward to working with you all to resolve this issue before August recess.

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