Chuck Grassley: “During the Easter break when the Senate was not in session, I was holding in Iowa Q&A's in 25 of our 99 counties. My…”

“During the Easter break when the Senate was not in session, I was holding in Iowa Q&A's in 25 of our 99 counties. My annual practice allows me to hear directly from the grassroots. At my meetings, Iowans set the agenda. No issue is off limits. I had a chance to hear from the Rural Health Transformation Fund--how it is working out for our hospitals and helping our communities. For example, in Pella, IA, they are using the Federal dollars to invest in a PET scan machine and an oncology nurse. Then I also had the working families tax cuts coming up and how that is making a difference in rural America. I also heard from farm families and rural bankers about the high costs of impacting farmers' bottom line. To relieve some pressure on this farming situation in the Midwest and, of course, my State of Iowa, I am calling on President Trump to use his emergency powers to suspend the countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizers. I also appreciate the President's recent tweet in regard to his concern about high fertilizer costs for farmers, so I am suggesting one way to him of how he could fix that. I have long been beating the drum on another issue affecting our family farmers, and that is for the nationwide, year-round E15. There has never been a more important time to infuse markets with $14 billion to boost the farm economy. That $14 billion is not my figure. It comes from the economists for the Iowa corn growers.”