{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/icymi-grassley-joins-the-scott-jennings-show-to-discuss-ag-blanches-confirmation-the-farm-bill-and-the-rise-of-democrat-socialism", "ICYMI: Grassley Joins The Scott Jennings Show to Discuss AG Blanche\u2019s Confirmation, the Farm Bill and the Rise of Democrat Socialism", "2026-08-12", "2026", "2026-08", "Republican", "Senate", "IA", "Chuck Grassley", "G000386", "www.grassley.senate.gov", "grassley", "https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases", "scraper", "BUTLER COUNTY, IOWA \u2013 U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined \u201cThe Scott Jennings Show\u201d this week to discuss his efforts as Judiciary Chairman to help secure Attorney General Todd Blanche\u2019s Senate confirmation, the importance of passing a bipartisan Farm Bill and supporting Rural America, and the Democrat Party\u2019s turn to socialism and more.\n\nWatch the full interview HERE. Excerpts follow.\n\nOn Blanche\u2019s road to confirmation:\n\n\u201cWell, [Blanche] did an awful good job at the hearing answering questions, and he was under oath. It happens that Senator Cornyn and Senator Tillis needed some additional certainty that the president's [Anti-]Weaponization Fund was not going to ever be used, and some other questions dealing with the president's settlement on his income taxes with the IRS. And it just took forever to get those things worked out, and it shouldn't have taken forever, because I think it was kind of a very simple process... [It] took about eight days that it shouldn't [have] taken, to get everybody worked out, and I was in the middle of trying to bring the people together... [E]ventually, it got him those two votes to get out of committee.\n\n\"...[I]t got down to two [Republican] senators voting no and [the nomination] carrying 50 to 49. And it [was] just a long process to go through...but I think he's going to make a very, very good Attorney General.\u201d\n\nOn Blanche\u2019s successful track record reducing violent crime:\n\n\u201cI talked about [Blanche\u2019s record] in my opening remarks in the committee, I talked about it in defending him to the journalists, and I talked about it in my closing comments on the Senate floor before he was approved... It's a very, very demanding reason why he should be...Attorney General instead of being Acting Attorney General.\u201d\n\nOn the need for Democrat support to pass the Farm Bill:\n\n\u201cIt's going to have to happen or we won't get a Farm Bill, because you\u2019ve got to have 60 votes to move the bill through the Senate floor.\n\n\u201cNow, just for a little bit of history. I've been a member of the Ag Committee since 1992. This is my seventh or eighth Farm Bill. This is the first one that never got out of committee with bipartisan support. The Democrats are holding it up because they don't like the reforms we made in the food stamp program. They want us to go back on some of those changes that were made. We offered them a compromise, and it wasn't enough for them. It was actually half the time that they wanted us to allow states to meet certain requirements, and they wanted two years. We have one year in it. We thought that was a reasonable compromise, but it wasn't enough to satisfy them.\n\n\u201cSo, consequently, we have to continue to work on it, and I hope we'll find a way to do it because we pass a Farm Bill every five years. The last one was 2018, so in 2023, we should have had a Farm Bill. So, effectively, by extending it for one year at a time, we have an eight-year Farm Bill now. There's a lot of changes that need to be made for the benefit of the farmers, because things have changed since 2018, and we need to update the Farm Bill and give the farmers some certainty.\u201d\n\nOn the top issues for Rural America:\n\n\u201c...[T]he ethanol issue that we call 'E15.\u2019 In other words, 15% ethanol mixed with your gasoline. We need a law passed to make that permanent, and that's about $14 billion of additional income to corn farmers. And that's the most important thing that I'm hearing from farmers.\n\n\u201cThe input costs are very high, so we have a fertilizer provision in this Farm Bill, if we get it passed. That should help in regard to [input costs].\u201d\n\nOn the rise of Democrat socialism:\n\n\u201cI wonder if [the Democrats have] ever read the Constitution of the United States...\n\n\u201c[O]ne of their platforms [is] to do away with the United States Senate. The Constitution says that \u2014 and it's called the only unamendable part of the Constitution \u2014 that, \u2018No state will have its Senate seats taken away from it without its permission.\u2019 Now, that means that, if you're going to do away with the United States Senate, you\u2019ve got to have 50 state legislatures say, \u2018We're going to give up our membership in the United States Senate.\u2019 There's a lot of things that just don't fit.\n\n\u201c...[I]t just seems very unrealistic. It doesn't seem like the real world. It seems like it's an almost revolutionary approach, and quite frankly, they're very open about wanting to change American society...\n\n\u201c[Democrat socialists] think that 535 members of Congress making all these decisions, running this big country and our big economy \u2013 that they're smarter than the 330 million people that each, in an individual way, [are] making their own individual choices, making their own decisions [about] how they're going to spend their money, and inventors what they're going to invent, and everything like that.\n\n\u201cThe greatness of America comes from the fact that we have an economic system and a constitutional system that allows anybody to do anything that they want to do, as long as it's within the law. And that's what's made America great. And I don't think [Democrat socialists] realize that.\u201d\n\n-30-", 1, "2026-08-13T06:17:16Z", "2026-08-13T06:18:13Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/icymi-grassley-joins-the-scott-jennings-show-to-discuss-ag-blanches-confirmation-the-farm-bill-and-the-rise-of-democrat-socialism"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.986842904239893, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}