Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

These are unhappy days for U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) and his fellow Republican Congresspeople from Iowa (there are no other kind).

Feenstra & co. have essentially one job: to get a Farm Bill passed every five years. The Farm Bill isn’t a radically new thing; Congress has passed them since 1933. The current Farm Bill expires on September 30. On that very day, by a cruel confluence, so do current federal appropriations, which sets up another one of those wearing government shutdown crises.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members avoided public comment for days after President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed on a deal to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025, in exchange for some federal budget cuts and other policy changes.

But they all fell in line on May 31. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) voted with GOP leadership and the majority of their caucus for the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn is among 500 Americans the Russian Federation added to its personal sanctions list on May 19. The Foreign Ministry’s latest list of U.S. citizens who would be denied entry to Russia includes former President Barack Obama and various Biden administration officials, dozens of members of Congress and state-level politicians, journalists including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Erin Burnett, numerous people associated with think tanks, and even comedians Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

The Republican who represents the third Congressional district is the only Iowan on the new “stop list.” Nunn posted on Twitter, “After years of fighting against Russian oppression and commanding mission after mission to curb Moscow’s aggression, I’m proud to be banned from Putin’s pathetic regime — the Russian people deserve better.”

Nunn served as an international elections monitor in Ukraine in 2019. After Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Nunn called for President Vladimir Putin to be charged with war crimes. He has sometimes criticized President Joe Biden for supposedly not having a plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Last year, Russia sanctioned all four of Iowa’s U.S. House members, later adding Senator Joni Ernst and eventually Senator Chuck Grassley to the list of Americans barred from entering the country.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members stuck with the Republican majority by voting on May 17 to refer a motion to expel U.S. Representative George Santos to the House Ethics Committee. The House had already referred the motion to that committee in February. But after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Santos on thirteen felony counts including fraudulent campaign contributions and unemployment insurance fraud, Democratic Representative Robert Garcia used a House rule to force a floor vote on the motion.

A two-thirds vote would have been needed to expel Santos. House members approved the referral instead along party lines, 221 to 204.

Three of Iowa’s four U.S. House Republicans submitted the maximum number of fifteen earmark requests for federal funding in fiscal year 2024, which begins on October 1.

U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), and Zach Nunn (IA-03) were among the numerous House Republicans who asked for “Community Project Funding,” which Congress directs in several dozen areas of the federal budget. Iowa Capital Dispatch reported on May 14, “The sum of Nunn’s requests is the highest, at $41.25 million. Miller-Meeks is second with $40.15 million, while Hinson requested $37.06 million.”

For the third straight year, Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) declined to submit any earmark requests. As Bleeding Heartland previously discussed, Feenstra’s staff has said the Republicans “believes it is time for Congress to restore fiscal stability and balance our budget.” But earmarked projects come out of funds the federal government will spend regardless. So when a member makes no requests, that person’s district loses its chance to receive a share of money that has already been allocated for earmarks.

Thanks to transparency rules established in 2021, the funding requests submitted by Miller-Meeks, Hinson, and Nunn are available online. Once the 2024 budget has been finalized, Bleeding Heartland will report on which projects received funding for the coming fiscal year.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch article by Ashley Murray and Ariana Figueroa highlighted an apparent contradiction: many House Republicans who have demanded steep cuts across the federal budget have asked for millions of dollars to support projects in their own districts. That has long been the case with earmarks: one person’s valuable community investment can be portrayed as wasteful pork in someone else’s district.

All four Iowans in the U.S. House voted on April 26 for a plan to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion for the coming year, in exchange for “aggressive caps on federal spending” over the next decade.

The House approved the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 by 217 votes to 215, meaning House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had no votes to spare.

The speaker secured passage of his bill by making concessions on biofuels subsidies on the eve of the vote. McCarthy had previously indicated he was not open to altering the bill, but a group of Republicans from the Midwest—including Iowa’s Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—insisted on changes.