Rod Blum, Guest columnist; July 17, 2018 Last week we celebrated National Civility Day, and I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you something that brought the current political divide into a more profound perspective for me. In June 2017, at the Republican team practice for the Congressional Baseball Game (a bipartisan game…
July 5, 2018 CEDAR RAPIDS — A decade after the historic flood of 2008 devastated Cedar Rapids, the Army Corps of Engineers has come through with $117 million to help pay for flood protection in the city, officials and agencies said Thursday. The flood caused an estimated $5.4 billion in property damages and economic losses…
June 25, 2018 CEDAR RAPIDS — A coalition labor union and liberal interest groups are targeting U.S. Rep. Rod Blum for his vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Keep Iowa Healthy has released a new television and online advertisement called “Didn’t Ask,” at https://bit.ly/2tEL9zO, that features Robin Stone of Manchester talking about the importance of…
JUNE 16, 2018 BY SHANE VANDER HART (Des Moines, IA) I am live-blogging today’s Iowa GOP State Convention today at the Jacobsen Center on the Iowa State Fairgrounds. The convention is set to gavel in at 10:00a. Be sure to refresh your browser to see each new update. The most recent update will be at the top….
By Nicole Ogrysko; April 26, 2018 Agencies and Congress need to give federal employees more incentives to identify overlapping federal programs or broken processes, the Government Accountability Office says. In its eighth annual report to Congress, GAO on Thursday identified 68 new actions that federal agencies or Congress could take to improve government efficiency and find more financial savings. GAO…
Charles S. Clark; June 25, 2018 Agency whistleblowers who previously had to file cases only in the Washington, D.C.-based appeals court will now have access to courts in their own region, based on a bill that cleared the House on Friday and is headed to President Trump’s desk. The All Circuit Review Act (H.R. 2229), pursued for…
BY REP. ROD BLUM (R-IOWA), OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/29/17 12:30 PM EDT It is a privilege to live in a country where someone like myself, raised by parents with 10th grade educations, can live the American dream. I am a small businessman, a coach, a father, a husband — not a career politician. I ran for…
Rep. Rod Blum | U.S. Representative for Iowa’s 1st congressional district; March 23, 2018 As a fiscal watchdog elected to Congress on the promise to rein in Washington’s out of control spending habits, this omnibus bill represents politics as usual in Washington. The text was not released until the night before the vote, effectively giving…
James Q. Lynch; Nov 25, 2016 CEDAR RAPIDS — Like President-elect Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Rod Blum has building a wall at the top of his to-do list. “Only it’s not the wall with Mexico. It’s the Cedar Rapids flood wall,” the Dubuque Republican said earlier this week. It’s his priority to see that the…