Health care tweets get Grassley's attention

Tweets from an Iowa health care reform advocacy group got Sen. Chuck Grassley's attention, but no direct response.

Sen. Chuck Grassley

However, the Iowa Republican's staff said Grassley was not ignoring Change That Works Iowa's Twitter.com-based campaign for health care reform, but was too busy during the day to read the messages. Twitter is a free social-networking service that allows users to send and read other people's updates -- known as tweets.

Despite no direct response from Grassley, Andrew Mertens of Change That Works Iowa was encouraged that the senator had been talking about health care throughout the day. During the afternoon, Grassley tweeted: "Rite now in bipartisan closed meeting on HealthCareReform."

Late Monday, Grassley's office issued a statement saying he appreciates what Change That Works Iowa is doing.

"It is using Twitter in a similar fashion to how Sen. Grassley uses Twitter -- as another way to communicate with Iowans and make representative government work," press secretary Beth Levine said.

Grassley, who has been in and out of meetings all day, including a meeting with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, planned to read the group's tweets at the end of the day, Levin said.

Starting Monday morning, Change That Works Iowa began sending Grassley tweets aimed at convincing him to support health care reform legislation, including a public health insurance option. Each hour for 24 hours, a tweet teaser about an Iowan's health care story was posted from "CTWIowaSEIU," which Grassley follows, and through direct messages to his username, "ChuckGrassley."

Change That Works Iowa has been engaging Grassley on several levels since kicking off its campaign in January. It has attended or sent representatives to Grassley's town hall meetings is each county around the state.

The group has maintained a good relationship with Grassley and his staff, he said, adding Grassley seems to appreciate the grass roots outreach employed by Change That Works Iowa, Mertens said.

The Twitter campaign did not produced any responses to Grassley's Twitter page, according to Levine, but Mertens said it created some buzz on Twitter. He saw tweets relating to Grassley and health care. Change That Works Iowa's web site: www.seiu.org/changethatworks/Iowa has seen activity, too, he said. He won't know how many people visited the web site until at least Tuesday.

In the meantime, she said, Grassley continues his effort to find agreement among Republican and Democratic senators on health care reform legislation.

"The work is ongoing in meetings among senators, between senators, through staff and in consultation with the Congressional Budget Office," she said.

It is Grassley's view that reform health care, which amounts to 17 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, should be requires a bipartisan consensus that would broad win the support of 80 senators, she said.

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