Republican US Senator Charles Grassley visited Jefferson on Wednesday.

He took questions from the full room of attendees for one-hour at the Greene County Community Center.  Grassley covered several different topics ranging from agriculture to foreign policy to government spending issues.

One important aspect he talked about at length was about how whistleblowers needed to be heard instead of getting put down by the Defense Department.  He told Raccoon Valley Radio that he hopes that’s what the new Veterans Affairs Secretary will do to help the national situation about military veterans waiting an extensive amount of time on waiting lists at VA hospitals.

“Whistleblowers are a good point of information.  And there’s a lot of whistleblowers that wanted to tell people that things weren’t right with the VA for at least months maybe years and they were intimidated not to report and that’s how things got so bad.”

Grassley said he voted against the immigration bill in Congress because it didn’t address securing the country’s borders to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country.  He believes they need to finish building the physical fence and then have electronic surveillance and using drones for extra protection at the borders.

However, with everything that has happened in the last couple of years, Grassley believes the country will get through the current situations that we are in because in the 236 year-history, we’ve been through a lot worse.