Grassley visits Mt.
Pleasant
by Andy Dygert
News Reporter

Finance, immigration and Iraqi foreign policy led the discussion during a town hall meeting this morning with Senator Chuck Grassley at the Henry County Courthouse.
Around 50 community members showed up to ask Grassley questions and hear his replies about the various issues at stake.
"To me this is representative government," said Grassley of the town hall meeting. "I am one half of it and your are the other half."
The audience, which Grassley said he was pleasantly surprised to see, was about half full of Democrats and half full of Republicans. This led to many very pointed questions.
"I was very glad to hear the Democrats that came to the town meeting," Grassley said. "I'm not scared to listen to positive or negative comments."
Grassley, who is the chairman of the Senate's Committee on Finance, was first asked several questions dealing with finance reform, especially dealing with taxes and health care. Grassley was asked why the minimum wage had not been raised in the past decade.
"I would vote to raise the minimum wage," Grassley said. "But when you raise minimum wage, you raise unemployment. So we're looking to find something that will raise the wage without hurting employment.
"Less than five percent of the people making minimum wage are completely relying on that income as their major source of income."

You can read the entire story in our July 7 issue.