WASHINGTON — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley spoke to members of the Mason City Chamber of Commerce by teleconference Tuesday afternoon, saying that the $3 trillion pandemic relief bill the House Democrats passed last week won’t be supported by the Republican-led Senate.

Grassley says, “There’s a lot of feeling in the Senate that that’s more than needs to be done, and there’s a lot of non-pandemic type things that have nothing to do with it that are riding along. We kind of think it’s more of a platform issue for the House Democrats than it’s a serious effort to help because of the pandemic, although it includes a lot of that as well.”

Grassley says with segments of the economy reopening, it’s better to see what needs to be addressed rather than just throwing money at things.  “How’s that developing? We think we’ll have another view in another three or four weeks. We’ve still got plenty of time before you get to the end of July when the first CARES Act runs out that we would view that, because the more the economy is turned around, the less you should have to do.”

Grassley says there’s also money from the previous pandemic packages that has not been distributed.  “There’s just billions of dollars, like $150 billion in the PPP program that’s not spent, and that’s from the second $310 billion that we put out in addition to the first $350 billion. We need to know how that’s spent. We need to know before you go to more aid for state and local governments, what are they doing with the $150 billion we already put out.”

Grassley is a Republican from New Hartford.