iowa

The Iowa Independent has the story.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told reporters on Friday that a public option will be included in the health reform bill ultimately signed by President Obama.
Harkin said that a “vast majority” — as many as 55 of the Senate’s 60 Democrats — support a robust public [...]

From The Iowa Independent:
A Clinton County District Court judge gave final approval Tuesday for a deal that resolves a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and ends with the retail giant paying up to $11 million.
The suit, which was started in 2001 by workers Sally Mussman and Ronda Harmon, included nearly 100,000 current and former [...]

The Senate finance panel just shot down an amendment to the committee’s health reform bill that would have required beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to show a photo ID in order to enroll. Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the senior Republican on the Finance Committee and sponsor of the proposal, said the [...]

Despite growing public support for a government-backed insurance option to compete with private insurers, a Senate panel on Tuesday twice beat back Democratic efforts to create such a plan.

I caught up with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at the How to Take Back America Conference to follow up on an issue that had come up there: “defunding the Left.” After ACORN, what was the next natural target for Republicans? King said it would be the Service Employees International Union.
“When you think what happened to [...]

Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher was a late addition to the speaker lineup at the How to Take Back America Conference last weekend in St. Louis, but I don’t know what the attendees would have done without him. After his short Friday night dinner speech, Wurzelbacher was given a golden wrench and a golden plunger [...]

As we mentioned in this piece earlier this week, the reluctance of the country’s physicians to accept new Medicaid patients is a real threat to undermining the effectiveness of the Democrats’ plans to expand the low-income health coverage program. After all, what good is insurance if no one accepts it?
There’s some debate about the reasons [...]

Byron York reports that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is blocking the all-important nomination of Alan Solomont, the president’s nominee for ambassador to Spain. The reason: “retaliation for what Grassley says is the administration’s stonewalling of Congress over documents relating to the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin.”

Several farm-state senators are looking to include a provision in a major appropriations bill that would significantly increase the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline, despite concerns about the impacts.
Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are reportedly considering (sub. req’d) offering amendments to force the Environmental Protection Agency to raise the blend level [...]