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It has been more than a week since we first reported about Republican Speaker of the House Pat Grassley allegedly killing two bills that unanimously passed the Iowa Senate. Both bills were championed by State Sen. Jim Carlin, who is challenging Speaker Grassley’s grandpa, U.S. Senator Charles Grassley.

Here is what we know about Senate File 321, which would have generated millions of more dollars for the Iowa Veterans Fund.

We know the bill passed the Iowa Senate 48-0 on March 10. We know nobody was registered against the bill. We know it was one of five bills that passed unanimously on March 10 in the Iowa Senate.

We know on March 9, there was a handful of bills that passed the Senate unanimously. We know on March 8 there were seven bills that passed unanimously in the Iowa Senate.

We know there were 16 or so bills that week that passed unanimously in the Iowa Senate that week.

We know that 15 of those 16 bills were all read for the first time in the Iowa House the day it passed the Senate or the day after.

But we know that one was not.

And we know the one that was not was Senate File 321.

Somehow, it just magically didn’t progress. It was just left to die.

Weird.

Senate File 321 was not introduced and referred to a committee by Pat Grassley until April 9. That’s an entire month after it passed the Senate unanimously.

Here is more of what we know.

For Senate File 321 to pass through the House and for Iowa veterans to score a victory, the bill had to pass through its House Committee by the second funnel deadline.

This second funnel deadline was April 2. The date came and went without Senate File 321 even being introduced into the House by Pat Grassley.

The inaction left the bill dead.

There are plenty of Republicans in the Iowa House who served in the military or have children who have served in the military.

Iowa veterans deserve to know how this bill died? They deserve to know if Pat Grassley made a political calculation with the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund. They deserve to know why every other bill that passed the Iowa Senate that week with unanimous support was treated differently than Senate File 321.

Surely this stinks to high heaven for others. But we still have no explanation.

We now know he killed it. The question is why.

Author: Jacob Hall

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