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.

The lie that stood out above all other in 2009, according to Politifact, was a Republican talking point that end-of-life planning provisions included in health care reform legislation will lead to the government deciding whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care.

Or, as it was more commonly known, “death panels.”

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

The claim began on the Facebook page of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but it was quickly picked up by other GOP dignitaries, including Grassley.During a town hall forum in Winterset, Grassley told the crowd that they “have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life; you ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

Later in the day, Grassley repeated the euthanasia claim, saying the provisions lead people to believe “that someone is going to decide grandma’s lived too long.”

For the next month, Grassley and his staff took turns defending and distancing the senator from the statement.

By the end of the year, Grassley was blaming media reports for his association with the death panels meme. In a letter to a constituent forwarded to The Iowa Independent, Grassley said some “commentators” took his comments and twisted them as saying that health care reform would establish death panels.

“I said no such thing,” Grassley said. “As I said then, putting end-of-life consultations alongside cost containment and government-run health care causes legitimate concern.”

The death panel rumor and all its derivatives has been repeatedly debunked and dubbed a “Pants on Fire” lie by Politifact.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Grassley said his “commitment to traditional values” and “respect for life” holds true both in the United States and around the world. So with that in mind, after he learned more about the proposed legislation through the U.S. State Department, he was able to conclude that it is wrong and should be rejected.

“Based on what I’ve been able to learn about the legislation and from the stand point that I’m a born again Christian, I can tell you that I don’t agree with this un-Christian and unjust  proposal, and I hope the Ugandan officials dismiss it,” he said.

For days, Grassley has taken heat from gay-rights groups that felt he should speak out against the legislation. They targeted the Iowa Republican because of his reported association with a secretive group of Christian politicians that has ties to Uganda legislators who introduced the anti-homosexuality law.

Initially, Grassley balked at their request, saying through a spokeswoman that he is not a member of the Ugandan parliament and is unfamiliar with the particulars of the law. He followed up that statement by telling reporters that he was too busy “reading bills in Congress without reading the bills in another 190 countries.”

After a week of pressure from activist groups and the media, numerous conservative politicians and Christian leaders that have been linked to the law have publicly spoken out against it, including Rick Warren, author and leader of California’s Saddleback Church, and U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla..

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

“I’ve always considered this a free-trade issue,” Grassley said. “Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers.  If Americans could legally access prescription drugs outside the United States, then drug companies would be forced to re-evaluate their pricing strategy.  The pharmaceutical industry would no longer have free rein to force American consumers to pay more than their fair share of the high cost of research and development.”

Grassley joined a bipartisan group of 19 senators in sponsoring the amendment, which could be debated Wednesday. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation would save $19.4 billion over the next 10 years.

The Associated Press reports that President Barack Obama’s administration is raising safety concerns about the idea, which could be a roadblock to its passage. Opponents argue that unsafe or ineffective drugs could find their way to American consumers.

Grassley said the legislation contains safeguards to prohibit counterfeit drugs from entering the system or other practices that would put the consumer at risk, and applies only to FDA-approved prescription drugs produced in FDA-approved plants from countries with comparable safety standards.

As a senator, Obama supported an earlier version of the bill, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was a leading advocate of drug reimportation when he was in the House.

Pharmaceutical companies also stand in opposition to the plan, which some predict could cost them billions of dollars.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

The medical use of marijuana is legal in 14 states and is being considered in several others, including Iowa. During the Bush Administration, agents raided several centers that dispense marijuana in California, where state law permits its medical use.

In a memo sent earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made it clear that federal officials would no longer prosecute medical marijuana use that was allowed by state law, even if it broke federal regulations.

“I think that marijuana is a gateway to harder drug use,” Grassley said. “Medical marijuana brings a certain amount of legitimacy to an illegal drug, even though it attempts to do it in a legal way. We have a federal law that is intended to outlaw its use. That federal law ought to be enforced.  It was enforced in the previous administration and I think having a national program against drug use is very, very important.”

Grassley said that while some of the people who produce and distribute marijuana may be law-abiding citizens in the eyes of their state, people should not forget that “most of the marijuana that flows into the United States comes from the drug lords.”

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy held hearings earlier this month regarding medical marijuana. State Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, introduced a medical marijuana bill during the last legislative session, although it did not make it out of committee.

“It just seems to me that the push for cap-and-trade has slowed down very dramatically since the [U.S.] House passed it on the Friday before the July 4th break,” Iowa Republican Grassley said, after noting that he didn’t believe cap-and-trade legislation would make it to the U.S. Senate floor this year. “It has really surfaced as being something that people understand and they don’t like, and that point of view is getting through to Congress.”

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Members of the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, commonly referred to as cap-and-trade legislation or the Waxman-Markey bill, in June. The legislation proposes limits on carbon dioxide emissions through the buying and selling of carbon credits. Emitters of carbon dioxide above the proposed limits would buy carbon credits from companies that are under the proposed limit, and the credits would be publicly traded by commodity brokers.

Mark-up of the Senate version of the legislation is taking place in the Committee on Environment and Public Works, headed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Grassley, who indicated Boxer’s committee would begin mark-up in early October, would like to see more input from the committees on energy and agriculture since both will be heavily impacted by the legislation.

“I think it’s very, very important that the Agriculture Committee participate in mark-up because if there’s any segment of the American economy outside of utilities that could be hurt by a cap-and-trade bill, it would be American agriculture,” Grassley said. “And I think, from what I’ve heard so far, that agriculture is not getting adequate pressure or adequate consideration for things that they’ve already done to capture carbon through just one example, no-till farming… and then the use of agriculture energy being a big factor in agriculture production.”

Although members of the Agriculture Committee, now under the leadership of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), has indicated that they will offer suggestions, Grassley would like to see them be more forceful through their own mark-up process.

“We need to make sure that agriculture has one voice on this cap-and-trade legislation,” he said.

Although admitting that he has concerns that the Agriculture Committee, under Lincoln and U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), might revert to the policy dominance of the rice and cotton industries that was seen during the ’60s and ’70s, Grassley said he does not have concerns about Lincoln leading in terms of potential cap-and-trade legislation.

“I’m not saying that [Lincoln] would do more than what [U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin] would do, but I think [through] her practical approach and her new leadership that she would want to be making sure she’s got her handprint on this piece of legislation,” Grassley said.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Not only is Grassley threatening to vote against the bill — even a bill he supports — if it doesn’t gain enough GOP backing, but his home-state recess tour has found him echoing false GOP accusations that the Democrats’ plans would empower the government to ration services and euthanize seniors. Many health policy experts say the behavior is indication that Grassley — the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee who’s up for reelection next year — has bowed to pressure from conservative colleagues to oppose the health care overhaul in favor of more incremental reforms. Or none at all.

“The hard-core Republicans are pretty hard core and so he is hearing a lot from them and less from others,” Michael Bailey, political science professor at Georgetown University, said in an email.

David Mayhew, professor of political science at Yale University, pointed out that Grassley’s GOP colleagues aren’t the only ones applying the pressure. Constituents at animated town hall gatherings this month have also made clear their reservations with the Democrats’ reform plans, and Grassley has already held four such events, with 16 more planned for next week. “Grassley seems to be drifting to an anti position on this health-care drive,” Mayhew said in an email. “That is not surprising … Right now, the median voter in Iowa must be quite nervous about this drive. The median voter in any upcoming Republican primary in Iowa is more than nervous.”

The comments arrive as the nation’s health care spending continues on its unsustainable skyward path, and the Democrats, behind a fervid push from the Obama administration, are proposing sweeping reforms to rein it in. Four congressional committees — three in the House and one in the Senate — have already passed reform proposals. Only the Senate Finance panel has yet to contribute a bill. As a result, all eyes this month are on theGang of Six, the bipartisan group of Finance members charged with crafting a compromise.

Grassley, a member of that bunch, issued a statement Wednesday reiterating the importance of coming up with a bipartisan bill. “Something as big and important as health care legislation should have broad-based support,” Grassley said. “So far, no one has developed that kind of support, either in Congress or at the White House. That doesn’t mean we should quit. It means we should keep working until we can put something together that gets that widespread support.”

U.S. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, speaks to a crowd in Panora last week.

But that call for widespread support is making some observers anxious, particularly in the wake of comments by Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, vowing to oppose the Democrats’ proposal unless they scrap the current plan and start anew. “There is no way Republicans are going to support a trillion dollar bill,” Kyl told reporters.

In an interview with National Review Wednesday, Grassley fingered four policy priorities he wants from the final bill: the absence of a public insurance plan, protections against rationing, assurances that Washington won’t disrupt the doctor-patient relationship, and tort reform.

Yet, to the surprise of many health care experts, Grassley is also threatening to vote against a health reform bill — even one he backs — if it doesn’t win enough votes within the Republican caucus. “If I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans,” he told MSNBC Monday, “I’m not a very good representative of my party.”

Julius Hobson, former lobbyist for the American Medical Association and now a senior policy analyst at the Washington law firm Bryan Cave, said that stipulation, by hinging Grassley’s support on whether guys like Kyl get on board, leaves Democrats with little power of negotiation.

“That’s a really big deal,” Hobson said. “That comment alone may have done [substantial] harm to the process.”

Jonathan Oberlander, health policy professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, echoed that message, warning that any bill capable of winning 15 or 20 Republicans would lose too many Democrats to pass. Such GOP support won’t be possible, he said, “unless the legislation falls far, far short of what most of the Democratic caucus supports.”

Grassley’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment, but issued a statement Wednesday reiterating the Iowa senator’s commitment to fighting for a bill that a substantial number of Republicans would support.

Not that Grassley isn’t capable of political independence. In 2007, for example, he bucked both the Bush administration and Republican leadership by leading the unsuccessful bipartisan effort to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Revealing the limitations of that independent streak, however, he ultimately voted with GOP leaders against SCHIP’s renewal when it came up again in January, arguing that the expansion was too broad and would encroach on private insurance markets. Further displaying his party-line feathers, in 2003 it was Grassley, then-Finance Committee chairman, who pushed through controversial Republican legislation creating Medicare’s prescription drug benefit and the Medicare Advantage program, both of which took steps toward privatizing the popular Medicare program.  The American Conservative Union ratesGrassley with a lifetime score of 83.

“More often than not he is a reliable conservative Republican, especially on economic issues, which may be at the core of his discomfort with the health care bill,” David P. Redlawsk, political scientist at Rutgers University, said in an email.

The historic relationship between Grassley and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is an unusually close one, riding straight into this year. Baucus has gone out of his way to appease his counterpart throughout the health reform debate, delaying release of the bill until September so the sides could iron out differences. Yet Grassley has reportedly balked this month over a face-to face meeting between members of the Gang of Six. Moves like that have left many health policy experts wondering if, on this health reform drive, the committee’s working relationship isn’t deteriorating.

Oberlander said that Grassley’s eyebrow-raising behavior has created “the appearance of a strain” in the bipartisan working relationship among the Finance leaders.

“You have the Republican who’s supposed to be the most cooperative, and he’s out there talking about death panels,” he said.

An impasse in the Finance Committee could have serious consequences. Without Grassley’s endorsement of the bill, there are real questions whether a sweeping health reform proposal stands a chance in the upper chamber, where 60 votes will be required to defeat a likely GOP filibuster. Although the Democrats have a 60-member majority, it’s uncertain whether ailing Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) would be available to vote.

Taking a lesson from the Clinton administration’s failed health reform push in 1993 and 1994, Obama has been careful not to make specific policy demands, instead laying out broad goals he wants the reforms to accomplish. But, as the thorny Finance panel debate has revealed, that strategy has its perils as well. Some observers are beginning to wonder if the White House is being aggressive enough in its push for a health system overhaul.

“If Mr. Obama wants to jettison the now-weakened public plan to dampen overheated opposition,” editorialists at The New York Times wrote Wednesday, “he should say what he will insist on instead.”

Mike Lillis covers congress for the Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Speaking with controversial radio host Steve Deace about a recent letter criticizing Grassley penned by GOP state Rep. Kent Sorenson of Indianola, Salier said it is not surprising political observers believed it was the first shot of a coming primary challenge.

“If this were 8 to 10 years ago, then yes, I would have been surprised by that reaction because Grassley was the dominant force in Iowa politics, in both parties,” he said. “Grassley was the dominant force and had an enormous amount of loyalty. That has so eroded out from underneath him. There is so much talk of primarying Chuck Grassley now that I think he had to respond very quickly to somebody like Kent Sorenson to try to head that off if that was indeed what Sorenson was thinking.”

After the letter was made public, Grassley apparently had dinner with Sorenson to discuss his concerns, which included past statements on same-sex marriage and his vote for the $700 million bank bailout.

Earlier in the day, Sorenson told Deace he has no interest in running for the U.S. Senate. However, he said he has been contacted by two different county central committees urging him to challenge Grassley in a primary.

If Grassley doesn’t take Sorenson’s complaints to heart, a primary challenger will emerge and Salier will work hard to make sure Iowa’s senior senator does not return to Washington, D.C.

“If he doesn’t right his ship on this, he very well may face a primary,” he said. “And if it’s someone who thinks like me on these issues or someone who thinks like Kent Sorenson does, I’ll take everything I’ve got to try to propel them forward.”

Grassley’s seniority in the Senate should not be a reason to support his candidacy, Salier said, since something like his position of power on the Senate Finance Committee means “absolutely bupkis if what you do with that power is work with [Montana Democratic Sen.] Max Baucus to try to advance socialized medicine.”

Deace said several times that if Salier were to enter the race, he would defeat Grassley.

“People are that frustrated,” Deace said.

This isn’t the first time Salier has discussed Grassley’s political vulnerablity. He blasted Grassley’s response to the April Supreme Court ruling overturning Iowa’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying he “isn’t even close to the same conservative” he was when he was first elected.

Salier is the founding member of the conservative group Everyday America. In 2002 he became a hero of sorts to Iowa’s social conservative movement when he ran a surprisingly close U.S. Senate primary race against Congressman Greg Ganske.

“I have voted for 11 different people either on or previously on the Supreme Court,” Grassley said. “Only one of those 11 was not confirmed. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to vote on this nominee, but it could be the first time I vote against.”

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Of the 11 individuals he favored for the post, Grassley said he knew that some would likely make rulings he disagreed with. He voted for them, he said, because they were qualified for the job. In fact, Grassley said the only Supreme Court justice he approved that later surprised him was Justice David Souter, the man Sotomayor hopes to replace.

Grassley also compared the hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas to what is currently happening with Sotomayor. In particular, he reminded those listening that although Thomas, like Sotomayor, had a compelling American story, and the Democrats in the Senate actively scrutinized him.

“The focus of the hearing is not Sotomayor, but we are interested in what people are going to do once they get on the bench,” he said.

“Otherwise we’re going to lose all of our manufacturing — or manufacturing jobs — to China because it’ll be cheaper for our manufacturing to go over there than to pay the stiff fees on energy that they’ll have to pay here,” Grassley said.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Last month, the U.S. House passed legislation that would reduce emissions by imposing a national limit, or cap, on greenhouse gases. It would then allow polluters to buy and sell their emissions credits. If a polluter emitted less than its allotment, it could sell the excess.

Opponents of the bill, which includes Grassley, say it will hike up energy costs at a time when citizens can hardly afford it.

“Every time a consumer in Iowa turns on their light switch, they’re going to be paying a tax that they don’t pay today,” he said.

But an equal concern, Grassley said, is that a provision in the House version of the bill that imposes import duties designed to stave off job loss in the manufacturing sector would likely violate international trade agreements.

“So in order to cover their rear end, they needed to put this import duties in so that they can have an excuse that they really aren’t doing anything that hurts American manufacturing when in fact they are,” he said.

On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee, of which Grassley is the ranking Republican, will hold a hearing on the international trade issues raised by the cap-and-trade bill.

Grassley has suggested several times that the U.S. wait for an international climate agreement before taking domestic action. A meeting scheduled for the end of the year will attempt to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, an international commitment for the reduction of greenhouse gases that is set to expire in 2012.