The Hawkeye on the Hill
The nation's capital is a place where political cliches are periodically reinvented. So perhaps it's not a surprise that a straight-talking, tightfisted, onetime pig farmer from north-central Iowa has become one of the most powerful men in Congress.
With Chuck Grassley, an independent-minded Iowa Republican, there is no swagger, no glitz, no hype. There are no cowboy boots, no power ties. And yet Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is the man to see. As much as anyone, he determined the shape of the $350 billion tax cut that President Bush signed into law last month. And now he is shepherding the most important structural changes in the 38-year history of the massive Medicare program--changes that will be debated this week in the Senate. But if Grassley's newfound muscle is impressing the power brokers, it doesn't seem to be fazing him. "You take it one day at a time," says the 69-year-old senator from New Hartford, Iowa, "and you pray."
Prayer may help, but the skills Grassley displayed last week as the Medicare package moved through the Finance Committee were far more earthly: a deliberate pace and an ability to reach across the aisle to build consensus with folks like Max Baucus of Montana, the Finance Committee's ranking Democrat. After all, the $400 billion Medicare package Grassley is tackling represents fundamental reform of a political sacred cow that has been beyond the reach of good intentions for years.
But the momentum is with him. "We are here to deliver," Grassley said last week. The legislation passed by the committee would offer a new benefit to help Medicare recipients purchase prescription drugs, either through the traditional Medicare program or through private health plans. The Finance Committee measure would require a Medicare patient to pay a $35 monthly premium and a deductible of $275 a year. Then the government would pay half of the patient's prescription drug costs until they reached $4,500 a year; the patient would pay the other half. Additional coverage would kick in when the patient's out-of-pocket costs reached $3,700. A similar bill in the House includes more incentives for Medicare recipients to join private plans. There's still some battling to do, but Grassley believes that Bush will have a bill he can sign on his desk by September.
And that would be a landmark achievement for Grassley, who has defied low expectations his entire political life. After he was elected to the Senate in 1980, a Washington magazine described him as one of the least intelligent members of the Senate. "I didn't think it was accurate," says Grassley. "It hurt."
But he didn't whine; he just went to work, spending time on the kinds of gritty oversight that many politicians shun. It was Grassley who brought America's attention to the Pentagon's curious penchant for $640 toilet seats. Cost overruns in government contracting drive him batty. "You know why a B-1 bomber cost a billion dollars each?" he asks. "Because it is a bunch of overpriced spare parts flying in unison." Grassley's proposal to freeze federal spending--including the Pentagon's budget--helped end the Reagan administration's buildups in defense spending.
Driving alone. He has also become the patron saint of whistle-blowers from all over the government, because in 1986 he pushed through amendments to the False Claims Act that allowed whistleblowers to collect a portion of damages paid by firms that defraud the government. Grassley says one reason he spent so much of his energy trying to root out fraud in government agencies was because he could do it without having to cut deals or trade favors. It was a tractor he could drive alone. "The thing about oversight is that you could do it yourself. You don't need 51 votes to do it, and you don't have to get down on your hands and knees before some powerful committee chairman and beg permission to do it."
Today, Grassley is one of those powerful committee chairmen, but you wouldn't know it from his habits. Grassley jogs 2 miles every morning with staffers, starting at exactly 5:29 a.m. He jogs in the morning instead of the afternoon because "I don't want to take two showers a day," he says. Afterward, he generally has a bowl of oatmeal. He's also famous for a frugal streak. He does not eat at the weekly Republican caucus lunch, because it costs $20. "I'm not going to pay $20 for a salad," he says. He hasn't embraced the atmospherics of his position for a reason. "I have seen a lot of powerful senators walk out of here, and then the next day they are a regular citizen and they don't know how to deal with it. I'm not going to have this big letdown when I walk out of here."
Meanwhile, the image of the man off the prairie endures. He has not actually raised a pig since he came to Congress 28 years ago, but the "hog farmer" moniker remains, and he does farm corn and soybeans on a 710-acre spread back home with son Robin.
"He is an interesting character because even after all this time in Washington, he has managed to continue to portray himself as a pig farmer from Butler County," says Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa. "I don't know that he does it intentionally, but it does work to his advantage."
Indeed. "He's dumb like a fox," says former Sen. Bob Dole, laughing out loud as he emerges from Grassley's office. Dole had been there for a typical lobbying call, but Grassley quickly turned it to his advantage by urging Dole to talk to another committee chairman about supporting Grassley's Medicare proposal.
"Chuck Grassley is one of the smartest and one of the most underestimated men in the Senate," says Bob Packwood, the former senator and finance chair, "and if anybody thinks that because he goes home to Iowa and farms every weekend, it means he doesn't know a whole hell of a lot about taxes or Medicare, or that he is not 10 times savvy, they're mistaken. If you're going to mess with Chuck, you've got to be smart and tenacious."
Talking straight. Grassley's aw-shucks manner and reputation as a straight shooter have also allowed him to pursue a famous streak of independence--even from the White House. In 1991, when the first President Bush was in office, Grassley was one of just two Republican senators to vote against the resolution authorizing the first Persian Gulf War. He supported the war this time around but has not hesitated to disagree with George W. Bush. When Bush announced in January that he would seek a $726 billion tax cut, Grassley responded almost offhandedly that the reality was likely to be about half that. After five months of wrangling, the bill the president signed came in at $350 billion. More recently, Bush was insisting that the Medicare restructuring encourage beneficiaries to opt out of the traditional program by providing better drug benefits under the private health plans. Grassley countered that benefits in traditional Medicare and the new managed-care option should be the same. What's emerging from Capitol Hill will most likely reflect the Grassley view.
Grassley also succeeds because he never forgets who he works for. In the Medicare fight, for instance, he is struggling to increase Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and doctors in rural states like Iowa, which ranks 50th among states in the level of Medicare reimbursements. Taking care of constituents has paid off at the ballot box. Grassley garnered 68 percent of the vote in his last election, and he has already made clear that he intends to seek a fifth term in 2004. "The Democrats don't have anybody good to throw at him, and even if they did, he would be awfully hard to beat," says Squire of the University of Iowa. Which, of course, does not mean they are not going to try. "He's undoubtedly had the worst few months of his political career," says Gordon Fischer, chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, arguing that Bush's tax cuts may not play well in generally liberal Iowa. Fischer is also counting on the Medicare reimbursement issue to give his party some traction against Grassley. "He's gone from untouchable to mortal," Fischer contends.
Grassley, of course, would deny that he was ever unbeatable. "If I thought I couldn't be beat, then I'd be beat," he says. It's the kind of thing you'd expect an old hog farmer to say.
BIO
"The thing about oversight is that you could do it yourself."
BORN Sept. 17, 1933
FAMILY Married. Five children, nine grandchildren.
EDUCATION Bachelor's and master's degrees, University of Northern Iowa.
PUBLIC SERVICE Iowa House 1959-75; U.S. House, 1975-81; U.S. Senate, 1981-present.
This story appears in the June 23, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.