September 03, 2014
One of the best and most straightforward arguments against the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to weaken the False Claims Act was made by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) at a House hearing last month. Paul Barrett of Bloomberg Businessweek wrote:
Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in written testimony (PDF) before the House panel that, given obvious self-interest, corporate whining about the FCA didn’t deserve respect—and didn’t even make sense.
“I’m always wary when I hear the biggest violators of a law hire people to talk about ‘strengthening’ it,” Grassley said. “The fact is that no other law in existence has been more effective in battling fraud than the False Claims Act has in the past 25 years.”
Amen to that Sen. Grassley. Whistleblowers are fortunate to have Grassley looking out for them. As Barrett noted, “The Chamber’s biggest foe in this fight isn’t the plaintiffs’ bar. It’s a plainspoken conservative Republican from corn country.”