Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has been appointed to a bipartisan panel charged with coming up with a compromise economic stimulus package.Grassley, two other Senators and three Congressmen have been appointed to the panel to break the three-month-long gridlock on the issue.The plan will extend unemployment benefits for another 13 weeks, and will provide tax rebate checks to low-income Americans who didn’t make enough to qualify for a rebate check this fall. Grassley says the package will most likely speed-up the tax cuts Congress enacted last June, as well as new tax breaks, like an acceleration of depreciation tables for business machinery and equipment. Grassley says that’s the kind of tax break that encourages business investment and creates jobs.Senator Grassley says the Bush Administration needs to take a greater role in promoting peace negotiations in the Middle East. But Grassley says Bush shouldn’t go as far as President Clinton did. Grassley says Clinton tried to dictate the peace, and forced Israel to offer more to the Palestinians than they’d been offered before. He says it emboldened the Palestinians to want even more.Grassley says the U-S will always have a role in supporting Israel because it’s stable democracy is a good example to the authoritarian regimes in the region, and because the U-S needs a base for military operations in the Middle East as we rely on the region’s oil supply.
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