Chuck Grassley

Chuck Grassley (born September 17, 1933, New Hartford, Iowa, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1980 and began representing Iowa in that body the following year. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1975–81).

Grassley was born in a small town in north-central Iowa and was raised on a nearby farm. He studied political science (B.A., 1955; M.A., 1956) at Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa). During that time Grassley did farm and factory work. He married (1954) Barbara Speicher, and the couple later had five children. In 1958 he successfully ran for the Iowa House of Representatives, serving until 1974, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He took office the following year and was twice reelected. In 1980 he ran for the U.S. Senate and won by a substantial margin.

Grassley entered the Senate in 1981, and over time he became one of the most-powerful Republican members of the body. He brokered legislation on such matters as antitrust and immigration reform, and he was active in health care issues. Grassley played a key role in the creation of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit (commonly called Medicare Part D), which lowered the cost of prescription drugs; the bill took effect in 2006. He also raised objections and obstructions to various components of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), though he subsequently opposed legal efforts to question the law’s constitutionality. While head of the Committee on Finance in 2001, he oversaw a broad program of tax cuts and reform. In addition, Grassley won praise from numerous consumer and taxpayer organizations for his work in identifying waste and fraud in federal programs. From 1993 to the start of the 114th Congress in 2015, he did not miss a Senate vote.