[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 5904-5906]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      BIPARTISAN AGENDA FOR OREGON

  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, there has been a tumultuous start to this 
session of Congress with often acrimonious debate about judges, budget, 
and the tragic situation involving Terri Schiavo and her family. But I 
rise this morning with my friend and colleague, Senator Gordon Smith, 
to speak not of division but of bipartisanship and of the hopes we 
share for our home State of Oregon and for our country.
  This morning marks the fifth time Senator Smith and I have unveiled 
what we call our bipartisan agenda for our home State. It has been our 
privilege and our pleasure at the beginning of each Congress to travel 
together around Oregon to listen to our fellow Oregonians and to find 
common ground on issues that matter to our citizens around their dining 
room tables and in their kitchens.
  We suspect that what we hear in our joint townhall meetings is what 
other Members of the Senate hear as well. Oregonians, and all 
Americans, now struggle with health care--families and farmers and 
business owners and health care providers. Oregonians and all Americans 
are struggling to make ends meet in this economy, and this means 
workers and employers. Oregonians and all Americans want 
opportunities--educational opportunities, job opportunities, 
opportunities so their children have better lives.
  Oregon has two U.S. Senators--a Democrat and a Republican--but we 
realize that for the most part, our citizens are not interested first 
in Republican solutions or Democratic solutions; they want solutions 
that work for Oregon and for our country. They want ideas, and they get 
frustrated when they see political figures letting petty and partisan 
differences get in the way of their interests.
  In the bipartisan agenda for Oregon in the 109th Congress, we are 
seeking to expand a number of our shared legislative goals to seek good 
for our fellow Americans. I was especially pleased to join Senator 
Smith as a member of the Senate Finance Committee this year. The 
committee oversees vital areas of policy, including health care, 
technology tax, trade policy, and many of the items on our agenda fall 
under the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee.
  We are also, in this agenda, working to expand our reach not only for 
Oregonians but for all Americans by working to tackle one of the most 
important and difficult issues in American health care, and that is 
providing catastrophic health care coverage so that our citizens do not 
have to go to bed at night fearing they are going to get wiped out by 
medical costs. This is a matter about which Democrats and Republicans 
have been talking for years, and there have been good Democratic and 
Republican ideas about catastrophic coverage for years. The fact is 
that if you own a hardware store in Alaska, Oregon, Iowa, or Florida, 
and you have five or six people and one of them gets sick, everybody 
gets wiped out in terms of their medical bills.
  Senator Smith and I believe we can develop a plan that will bring 
this Congress together, give us the opportunity to pass catastrophic 
health care legislation to be enacted and the President can sign into 
law.
  So ours is a bipartisan agenda for Oregon, but it is also an 
invitation on the part of the two of us to contribute ideas and good 
will on issues where 
we have struck common bipartisan ground.
  Our intention for a few minutes this morning is to speak on a number 
of these items--in effect, one of us speaking for both of us. I am very 
pleased to yield to my good friend and colleague, Senator Smith, and to 
thank him for all of the opportunities to work with him, particularly 
for his willingness to consistently meet me more than half way in our 
efforts to try to work for our State. I thank Senator Smith.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. SMITH. Madam President, I thank my colleague.
  It seems only yesterday but it was over 8 years ago that Senator 
Wyden and I engaged in a very hotly contested race for the seat of Bob 
Packwood, formerly the seat of Wayne Morse. I believe he was called 
``the tiger of the Senate,'' a man for whom Senator Wyden had worked 
earlier in his college years.
  Ours was a campaign that Oregonians will not soon forget because it 
was so hard fought. It was a special election. Ron Wyden won that race, 
and I narrowly lost that race. Yet, through a matter of circumstances, 
it was possible for me to continue running for the seat of Mark 
Hatfield with his announced retirement. So a few months later, I was 
elected to the U.S. Senate to the Hatfield seat, the McNary seat, the 
Baker seat. I think it was a question on every Oregonian's mind and 
certainly in the press whether Ron Wyden and I could work together in 
any fashion because of the difficulty of the race we had run.
  What I did the morning after my victory was to call Ron Wyden and 
invite

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him to breakfast. No sooner had the orange juice been poured than it 
was very apparent to both of us that we were similar in nature in terms 
of our desire to do right by the State of Oregon. And while we would 
come at two issues from different political perspectives, we quickly 
recognized that on the matter of one's State, there was a community of 
interest, indeed, an incredible resource, and if we could find a way to 
put partisanship aside when it came to the borders of Oregon, we could 
find many areas where together, as a Republican and a Democrat, we 
could serve the interests of our Nation but particularly the interests 
of Oregon.
  Senator Wyden is the most senior elected Democrat, and I am the most 
senior elected Republican in our State. We understand that to our 
parties, we owe loyalty on nearly all procedural votes, we owe to our 
parties support of our nominees, but to each other we owe respect, and 
we have found that easy to come by. So after once being competitors, we 
found ourselves colleagues.
  In the course of 9 years, we have found a very rich friendship. We do 
not editorialize on one another's votes. We try to support in every way 
we can the initiatives of the other. And we have found that the winner 
is not just our friendship but, much more importantly, the people we 
serve in the great State of Oregon.
  What we do today is announce yet another bipartisan agenda, this one 
for the 109th Congress, a list of items that are specific, some 
general, but embark us on an agenda which we think will leave our State 
better when this Congress goes to sine die.
  The common ground we have found in some cases is not on difficult 
issues, but it includes supporting communities, families, and children. 
Much work needs to be done to confront Oregon's methamphetamine agenda, 
including passing the Combating Meth Act and pursuing full funding for 
the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program.
  We will help improve access to higher education by keeping 529 higher 
education savings tax free.
  We will find new ways to alleviate hunger and the causes of hunger 
for Oregon's economically vulnerable citizens.
  A major part of our agenda is aimed at ensuring economic stability 
and growth. This includes defending Oregon timber producers from unfair 
trade practices and pressing the administration to work diligently for 
a new soft wood agreement with our neighbor, the nation of Canada.
  We will support our ports so they can remain vibrant. We need to 
maintain funding for Oregon's smaller ports and work to ensure that the 
port of Portland's competitiveness in the future is ensured by dredging 
the Columbia River channel.
  Our agenda includes promoting renewable energy and furthering 
Oregon's status as the premier State for the development of renewable 
resources through tax and energy legislation.
  We will work with our colleagues in the House and the Senate to 
protect the county payments legislation that brings over $200 million 
to Oregon counties annually. This is a program that was started with 
our effort to help vulnerable rural places that have lost timber 
receipts to have sufficient resources so that their schools can remain 
open, their streets can remain paved, and their neighborhoods can 
remain safe.
  We will also work with the understanding that a strong economy 
depends upon affordable power rates. We will stand up against any 
attempts to force BPA to sell its power at market-based rates or 
restrict its access to capital for infrastructure investments.
  Before I yield to Senator Wyden, I note for our friends in the media 
that one of the most significant issues Senator Wyden has already 
highlighted on our agenda is our effort to provide for catastrophic 
insurance. On the issue of health care, our Nation faces a crisis. 
Certainly the people of Oregon do. I have always believed that in 
America, and certainly in Oregon, the loss of one's health should not 
mean the loss of one's home. So what we are going to do together on the 
Finance Committee is pursue an agenda whereby people in America will 
have the ability to have in emergency situations health care for 
catastrophic illnesses so their families are not left destitute and 
their heirs are not left bankrupted.
  I yield now to my colleague, Senator Wyden.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, the Senator has summed it up very well. I 
pick up on his comments with respect to health care. As my friend 
knows, this has always been my first love, going back to my days with 
the Gray Panthers. I have been especially proud that Oregon has been a 
leader in this area, first essentially in home health care, using 
dollars that could have gone for institutional care for home care, or 
the Oregon health plan, which began the debate about tough choices.
  I particularly want to note with Senator Smith on the floor this 
morning that Oregon again is in a position of leading on health care, 
and that is because my friend and colleague, through an extraordinary 
effort, has been able to send a message across this country that those 
on Medicaid, the most vulnerable people in our society, people who 
always walk an economic tightrope, balancing their food costs against 
their fuel costs and their fuel costs against their medical bills--
because of Senator Smith's efforts during the budget, there is an 
opportunity now to renew the protections those vulnerable people have.
  He and I agree completely that there are opportunities to promote 
reforms in Medicaid and we are committed to that, but because of 
Senator Smith's effort we are not going to put budget cuts ahead of 
reforms. So as we go to this discussion about health care, I 
particularly want to commend my colleague because his leadership on 
Medicaid is part of the long tradition of Oregon being first in terms 
of making judgments about health care. I am proud to be able to assist 
in his efforts.
  My colleagues will see that the Medicaid reform commission Senator 
Smith envisions and other reforms we have worked on are a big part of 
our effort.
  With respect to catastrophic care, what is so striking about this 
debate is that experts have known what to do about this issue for 
years. One can get an awful lot of protection for a relatively small 
amount of dollars. For example, on any given day in our country, if 
somebody gets sick in a small business, it essentially blows the whole 
premium structure for everybody. If just one of the employees, where 
there is a little store of five or six people, gets sick, then rates 
skyrocket for everyone.
  What Senator Smith and I are going to do in our catastrophic care 
bill is spread the risk, look to a way, for example, where Government 
might pick up a bit of that risk. Democrats have proposed it. 
Republicans have proposed it. Once there is that kind of risk 
spreading, instead of what happens now when one person gets sick and 
everybody pays higher bills, Government picks up a bit of that risk and 
the costs go down for everybody.
  The two of us are on the Senate Finance Committee and we are going to 
do everything we can to try to bring the committee and the Senate 
together around these ideas.
  Members of both political parties have had good ideas on this for 
literally a couple of decades. I remember talking about catastrophic 
care when I had a full head of hair, and we should have done it then. 
Senator Smith and I are going to try to tackle it. We will also look at 
some other issues that have great implications for our State but also 
for our country overall. One of them involves equity for health care 
providers.
  Today, at a time when we have this demographic revolution, and we are 
going to have so many more older people, one would think the Federal 
Government would try to reward providers for doing the right thing, 
offering good quality care and holding costs down. Instead, the Federal 
Government sends the opposite message. The Federal Government basically 
says to Oregon and to other States that are doing a good

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job, well, tough luck, folks. Instead of rewarding you, we are going to 
actually stick it to you. We are going to penalize you and limit your 
reimbursement in spite of the fact that you provide higher quality, 
more efficient health care.
  We are going to try to change that reimbursement system. It will 
obviously help our State, but I would submit, if one looks at the 
challenges for Medicare, the head of the General Accounting Office, 
David Walker, has said Medicare is seven times as great a challenge as 
is Social Security. And we cannot afford not to have the Smith-Wyden 
reforms with respect to reimbursement for health care providers. I am 
very hopeful we will be able to win support in the Finance Committee 
and in the Senate for those reimbursement changes as well. They make 
sense for our State, but they are absolutely critical for our country 
as well.
  In addition to health care, which will be a prime focus of our work, 
Senator Smith and I want to make sure we promote the use of innovative 
technologies, making sure that they are accessible and affordable so as 
to capture the opportunity to use technology to grow incomes and 
strengthen our economy. Depreciation will be a topic we will focus on 
because right now businesses that need new technologies to keep up in 
tough global markets take a big tax hit if they change their equipment 
as frequently as they need to in order to keep up with the competition.
  We intend to work together on the Finance Committee to change tax 
laws and be able to accelerate the depreciation of equipment and end 
the penalties our businesses pay for staying on the cutting edge of our 
economy.
  We also intend to promote nanotechnology to continue to work to make 
Oregon a national leader in the new small science. Americans are not 
completely sure what this field is all about. A woman came up to me in 
a small store in Oregon recently and said: Ron, I do not know what this 
nanology is, but I am glad you are working on it.
  The science of small stuff is going to be the wave of the future, and 
unprecedented collaboration between the public and private sectors has 
made Oregon one of America's leading microtechnology and nanotechnology 
centers.
  Senator Smith and I joined to be part of an effort in the Senate to 
provide billions of dollars for nanotechnology that would create 
regional centers in this exciting field, and we intend to work to make 
certain that those efforts receive the Federal attention and credit 
they deserve.
  We will also work to build out broadband and the telecommunications 
technologies. We intend to work again in the Finance Committee to 
create appropriate tax incentives that will ensure broadband gets to 
the four corners of our State, and, of course, to pick up on our theme 
that what we are doing makes sense for Oregon and for our country.
  I submit that the Smith-Wyden effort, as it relates to broadband, 
technology, and the Web, will be of great benefit to Alaska as well. We 
are fortunate to have had a good relationship with Senator Stevens as 
well who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
  The last point I make with respect to technology is as we try to 
bring all of those folks on to the Web and to be part of our Web-based 
economy, we should not hit them with a variety of new taxes. The 
bipartisan Internet tax Freedom Act makes it illegal to level double 
taxes or discriminatory taxes when one surfs the Web or makes Internet 
purchases. The two of us will be working on our committees, both the 
Commerce Committee and the Finance Committee, to make the Internet tax 
moratorium permanent to preserve Web access and Web commerce for the 
future.
  We want to work together with our colleagues, and we have come today 
to say we want to promote smart solutions, the kind Oregonians and 
Americans should expect from the Senate.
  I will yield back to Senator Smith so he can close out our joint 
presentation, and in yielding tell him that in addition to what we are 
trying to do for our State and the impact I think our ideas will have 
for the country in a variety of these areas, technology and health care 
and the issues we have mentioned, I hope what we are doing in the 
Senate today will be infectious and will cause other Senators to join 
in these kinds of efforts.
  Very often colleagues have come up to Senator Smith and me and sort 
of said, what is in the water out there? What are you guys doing? I 
have never heard of this. We always respond, try it, you will like it. 
It is not going to be painful.
  I see our friend from Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe, who has always been 
very kind to me in working on infrastructure and other issues, and I 
will say that in an acrimonious time, when there are certainly 
divisions, let us try to find every possible way to come together. We 
realize it is not always possible to do it, but what is exciting about 
America is we debate issues in a vigorous way. Certainly Senator Smith 
and I do not agree on everything under the Sun, but we certainly agree 
on a lot of critical matters. Even if we do not, we talk about them in 
a way that we think is respectful and promotes to our citizens the 
reality that debate can be thoughtful, it can be contemplative, and it 
does not always have to be about scorched earth kind of politics. I am 
very pleased that Senator Smith will conclude for both of us in our 
joint presentation. I thank him again for all of his efforts to work 
with me.
  When I had a chance to come to the Congress, and Senator Jim Inhofe 
and I were then Members of the House, I dreamed of having this kind of 
opportunity to work in a bipartisan way in representing our State, and 
I thank my colleague for doing so much to make that possible.
  I yield to him to wrap up not just on behalf of himself but to wrap 
up on behalf of both of us.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. SMITH. Madam President, I thank the Senator.
  I think he said it well. So much can be accomplished if colleagues 
will focus on the possible instead of the polemic. When we do that, we 
find that the people's business is moved forward in a positive way and 
our Nation makes progress.
  I conclude with these words: I do not know how long Oregonians will 
grant me the honor of representing them in the Senate, but I do know 
for as long as I am in this Chamber and for as long as Senator Wyden is 
my colleague, we will continue to look for ways to move beyond 
partisanship and to continue our partnership for Oregon.
  We yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Let me inquire as to what is the regular order?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Senators are permitted to speak for 
up to 10 minutes in morning business.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to 
speak for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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