Republicans in Congress only have a matter of days before they lose control of both chambers to the Democrats after last Tuesday’s election. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, says he’s returned to the Capitol with a renewed sense of urgency to pass a number of bills while he’s still a member of the majority party.
Grassley says “It’s this week and then presumably, we’re going to be home for Thanksgiving for two weeks and then we’ll be back two weeks after that. So we have about 15 days to get these things done and we should get them done, I believe.” Grassley says he’s set several goals for the remaining days.
Grassley says “My priorities for the lame duck session are: extended tax relief for college students, teachers, research and development — as three issues among a long list of what we call extenders — something that should’ve been passed in the summer but got mixed up with the estate tax and obviously is not law yet.” He says it’s very realistic that his goals will be met in the allotted time.
Grassley says “We’re going to get a great deal of cooperation from Democrats to get them done because I think that they would like to have them off their plate when we come back next year so they don’t have to mess with them.” Many pieces of the tax legislation would be retroactive to January first so Grassley says taxpayers could take advantage of them in the coming tax year.