ms. tyson, i thank you for your thoughtful comments. thank you very much. thank you for coming. [applause] >> thank you, mr. grassley. [crowd discussion] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> shortly after this town hall meeting, senator grassley spoke issues thatrs about were brought up. he talked about the possibility about holding additional meetings with constituents. about --ed to ask you you set up for big meetings this week. what of the takeaways? sen. grassley: concern about

what is going to happen as a result of repealing the affordable care act, what is going to take its place. the other one is immigration, and the other one is general dislike of what trump has done to this point. >> what do you think -- there was a question about steve bannon's comments at cpac. i think he said his vision is destruction of the administrative state. do you think that is the right vision? sen. grassley: i think what he is talking about is just those things that administrators do beyond what the law allows. for instance in the case of waters of the u.s., epa ruling. that is being held up by the courts in ohio, i guess. nationwide as well. then what the president did on

legalizing 4.5 million people that he figures he can do by administrative orders. the courts have said that is illegal. died, the last opinion he wrote was on the epa opinion on coal. he did not say the rules were wrong but you did not go through the administrative process you were supposed to. you have to go back and do it the right way. i think it is nothing but administrative overstep that they are trying to bring within the law and within the constitution. >> so maybe not as frightening as some people would make it seem? sen. grassley: well, after all, here, theme out president proposes, we dispose. they can't get away with anything the losses they can do and the courts are a check on andexecutive legislative branches of government. >> it seemed to me that a lot of

questions that you had changed over the years of being in congress. what are your thoughts on that? sen. grassley: i presume most of this audience come from the 36% that voted for my opponent. you might expect that from them. where i really don't like to hear it is from fellow republicans. i have not heard it in a long time from fellow republicans, what if you go back to the tea and 2010, i 2009 heard it more from republicans than i did from democrats. back then i was getting praise from democrats and the republicans seemed to take exception to the stance. the bottom line is chuck grassley has not changed. senator, you have seen a lot of outrage in town halls this

week from your colleagues. are you concerned about the terms and how the trump administration may affect the potus going forward? i think after 33 days it is too early to make a judgment about that. i think that you can test -- can't test a president after 33 days. it is very clear that this is a president who wants to do everything he promised in the election that he can do without having to change laws and then going through congress, he wants to do everything he can and that is what he has proceeded to do. i think considering how cynical the american people are about a politician running on one platform and serving on another platform, i think that people would be satisfied that a president said what he is going to do, he actually does it in office. the on that, it would be

difficult for me to make judgment. six months from now, the question would be more >> appropriate. >> executive orders. does that concern you? sen. grassley: most of these executive orders have come in the way where they are trying to reverse something that obama did. if obama had the legal authority or constitution to do something by executive action, this president has it. this president needs to be warned about doing that the same way. there have been 50-60 court cases in the eight-year is that obama has been president that the court said he acted against the law, and even in one case on a 9-0 decision said he violated rb. constitution to the nl you have the checks of the court and i think the president needs to be cautious the same way that

obama was not cautious. that is doing everything if obama could do it legally, this president can do it legally. >> there were a lot of questions about immigration. you emphasize the need to remove dangerous criminals from the country. but from what i have read, the administration's plans might go a lot further than that. is there a line or something that you would take in terms of when an activity might go too far or when the president might be enforcing those laws too robustly? sen. grassley: if you expect this to be a law, a nation based on the rule of law, you can't make any exception to it. if you start making one exception, you are going to have to justify why other people have to obey a certain law.

that is the principle of our country and constitution and society and everyone respects it. if you did not respected, we would have a chaotic society. there is a practical answer to your question. it is called administrative discretion. you can have any number of prosecutors, but you might have violations of law, so you might have to say what are you going to enforce, what are you going to prosecute first? obviously you prosecute those who are most dangerous. the same way with deportation. you don't have the resources or desire in america to remove everyone, so you prioritize criminal aliens and those who have been adjudicated. that is where the emphasis is and we will see when that gets done who else will be affected. >> can you talk about what will

be coming in legislation, not immigration reform but when they talk about how the system is broken? sen. grassley: i don't think there will be any comprehensive immigration reform. i believe there will be some smaller pieces of legislation dealing with agricultural workers, unskilled workers, and professional people like engineers. i believe there will be some legislation to make mandatory sentencing for people that are deported and come back into the country. who have beens deported and come back into the country. the steinle bill in iowa, we have sarah's law that is trying to get past. help the sarahs law goal. sarah's family could not get information from the government and this is to make sure that that information gets to the

families. let's see. that line, i guess i had better leave it at that. there may be more, but i think that will get the most attention. >> [indiscernible] sen. grassley: of course. in polk county last year, i had 30 hewitt aids with different a's, with 30 q and different people. i have interviews with different people all the time. i'm surprised i don't get more criticism that i don't come to the rural counties of iowa sometimes. hear abouttill policy? what do you hear about from people in town halls? sen. grassley: what i hear about, the thing that has been emphasized to me is medicaid obamacare and the

two peopleof that that aren't covered by private insurance within obamacare. i think that has been brought home pretty strongly to me. that does not mean i have a policy that i can enunciate as a result of it, but it is getting much more consideration not only to chuck grassley because of iowa town meetings, but it seems to be from other town meetings as well. murkowski yesterday is an example. >> earlier this week in hampton you said you support keeping the consumer protection and the with thepay for this subsidies and exchanges, are you in favor of keeping those in place? sen. grassley: it depends on -- if we have a replacement

immediately when we have with repeal, then the new policies might take care of that probably through refundable tax credits and tax credits. about, or'm speaking to answer your question, if there is a police of time and a month ago there was a talk of two years between repeal and replacement. during that period of time, we made it very clear we would keep in place the exchanges and the subsidies that go with it. thank you all very much. >> one more question, actually. sen. grassley: you don't have to apologize. >> i wanted to anyway. you have been doing this thing, coming and visiting constituents from a long time. have you ever seen a reaction like this? what you think people are acting like this, republican, democrat, whatever? what do you take away from it?

sen. grassley: that people think congress is not acting fast in a. i don't expect you to happen to know what happened in 2009 and last year. you may remember last year, but these are relatively quiet town meetings compared to 2009 when i had 750,000 people on the lawn of the dallas county courthouse well lot of other lawns as and also compared to march, april, may, june of last year in --ard to garland in a garland as example. these are relatively quiet. >> as contentious and loud as these get, why is it important to have these? sen. grassley: i will answer your question in more than two words. those words are representative government. if you are going to have representative government, you have to have dialogue with your constituents. usually we start a town meeting

with five minutes of what i am telling you now. i did not want to type came away from a big crowd to go into some of it. the principle of representative government is i am one half of it. you are the other half. you have to have dialogue with your constituents if you have representative government. if this is the only way do it, you would not have representative government. if someone leaves their name and address, we answer our paper. that is how i keep it up when i can't be in iowa. keep it up every day. >> is there anything you will take back to iowa to washington that you want to change? sen. grassley: this will be a repeat of what i told the national news, but basically the real concern about the affordable care act, how much time there is between repeal and replacement and the emphasis on my office since does not want to

much light between the two. if it could be simultaneous, it ought to be simultaneous. the second is immigration issues and the third would be on medicaid as it relates to the obamacare expansion of medicaid. >> thank you, guys. that is all the time we have. >> watch c-span as president donald trump delivers his first address to a joint session of congress. >> this congress is going to be the busiest congress we have had in decades. theollowing the speech, democratic response given by former kentucky governor steve bashir and your reaction, followed by comments from members of congress. at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. next fromup "washington journal," a look at how the len eales view conservatism. a discussi o