Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, will share the podium at a news conference in Washington D.C. on Wednesday with New York Senator Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. Despite what may be perceived as vastly differing political philosophies, Grassley says he’s working well with the former First Lady on ways to improve the functioning of programs for adopting kids with special needs. Grassley says “The media tends to emphasize differences of opinion in Washington and conflict because it makes news. That’s a minority of the stuff we do together. The adoptions issues and the special needs kids issues, with me, has always been bipartisan.” Grassley and Clinton will appear with officials from the group Voice for Adoption to release details of a new Government Accountability Office report. Grassley says despite how they may be portrayed as bitter enemies in the media, members of opposing parties are there to do the people’s work, not their party’s work. Grassley says “I may only vote with these people ten or maybe 20-percent of the time but when we can work together, we work together. It’s very important to remind people that everything in Washington is not extremely partisan. There are some issues that are very partisan. They tend to maybe take the most time, but they’re not a majority of the issues.” As for the report being released, Grassley and Clinton requested the study in 2004 as part of their effort to make sure federal adoption laws were working as well as they could for children with special needs.
