Woodburn Independent Online

Schrader talks about, and defends, congressional votes

Part I of two-part Q & A with Rep. Kurt Schrader

• By: Patrick Johnson  
• Published: 12/1/2009 1:04:52 PM

Kurt Schrader

Imagine trying to learn a new job amid sweeping changes and landmark legislation.
 
That’s exactly the situation Rep. Kurt Schrader found himself in during his first 10 months as the representative from Oregon’s House District 5.
 
Schrader, of Canby, has been part of the process that has approved legislation regarding energy policy, health care and economic recovery.
 
Recently, Schrader sat down and talked about policy in Washington, D.C. Answers have been edited for length and clarity:
 
Question: I would imagine that being a new congressman has a steep learning curve. How has that been going your first year in office?
 
Schrader: “Yes. It’s better having been in the (Oregon) legislature. If I hadn’t been in legislature it’d be really bad. So, I have no idea how some of my colleagues are coping who have no legislative experience.
 
“But even still, things are done differently — I mean the layout is huge, all these subterranean tunnels you need to learn how to navigate. You gotta figure out the new rules, their Parliamentary procedures are different. How they amend bills and such is different. Unlike the state legislature, they don’t bring a bill to committee. You don’t get a bill that comes to committee, is read, everyone gets a copy of the bill and you decide how to amend or fix or not pass the bill. That doesn’t happen in Congress. They leak out little snippets of this and that, things they (are) thinking of doing and ideas and concepts.
 
You never see a bill until the bill is presented and then it’s immediately passed in that committee. You have your amendment already drawn up. It’s all done like that, and I find that a little distressful. I’d rather have a chance to mull it over and look, and then amend later.
 
“For the first six to seven months, I felt like I was swimming upstream and now I feel like I am starting to swim downstream a little bit. I am a little more comfortable.”
 
Question: What have been some of the challenges you have faced during your first year in office?
 
Schrader: “I’m surprised, but I shouldn’t be, that people didn’t have the same view as Oregonians. I was hoping one of my little campaign mantras I felt would be good … we did some pretty good things in 2007 in the state legislature … (I) could bring some of that to Washington, D.C.
 
“I have a number of colleagues where climate change was not something they ran on, or energy independence. They don’t worry about that, they are coal states. ‘It’s just fine, you don’t need to do anything. It’s fine’ — and that was a shock to me.
 
“I thought everyone realized we are at the mercy of all these OPEC nations.
 
“And health care reform — I was shocked at some of the people and their views there. I know a lot of elements in these bills are things we’ve been fighting for in Oregon for years. And now they are coming true through the national agenda. I think that’s good.
 
“So it was a challenge when I walked in there, to think, ‘Whoa, we have got a lot of educating,’ a lot of compromising, because people come at these issues from totally different perspectives.
 
“It’s a big, big, big country and it really was driven home to me when you get there and you see those things.
 
“And logistically, the other thing was trying to figure out where to spend your time. Where can I be most effective, pick out some core areas? I made a conscious choice to try not to duplicate the areas that Rep. Peter DeFazio does well in, that Rep. Greg Walden does well in, that Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Rep. David Wu, try to find ways to compliment them and ways to work.
 
Question: In the Oregon Legislature you were called a budget hawk, Darth Schrader, because people knew you were a Democrat, but also watched the budget and the facts and the figures. Some are asking, “When did you change to support bills like the energy bill, health care and stimulus package?”
 
Schrader: “The real answer there is I haven’t changed. There has been a lot of misinformation. The cap and trade doesn’t cost anybody anything. It’s all fully paid for just by the fact it’s cap and trade. So the revenues to run the system come from the system itself.
 
“There are no new taxes levied (or) taxes even in this situation. But it doesn’t add one dime to the deficit, as the president is fond of saying.
 
“The education bill that we passed out that increased the Pell grants (to be) fully paid for, all we did is we took the middle man out of the whole process. We were paying people to administer this program way more than if we ran the program ourselves. So we are letting the universities do it in-house. As a matter of fact, that $80-some billion, we had $10 billion left over so we paid down the deficit. So again, it didn’t cost the taxpayer a dime, contrary to what people will say.
 
“The whole health care plan bill, you may not like the fact that there is going to be some new tax, or source of revenue for it, but it doesn’t add a single dime to the deficit. Half of it is paid for by savings, which is totally overlooked by the right-wing Neanderthals that like to beat us up. But it’s one of the best things that we have done in a long time in terms of getting Medicare more solid. It doesn’t cut benefits, it makes it more solid.
 
“The only thing we did that will add to the deficit is the recovery package. As we talked about, I will defend that, OK? It helped people get through a tough time, unemployment stuff, it put money into the taxpayer’s pocket, helped the states, did some infrastructure work. I will defend that — and as you well know, two-thirds of the deficit we inherited from the previous administration and Congress. It isn’t this Congress that did that, or this president.
 
“So a lot of what they are saying is wrong. Along with that, I am also on the budget committee and we have pushed out on the House side a new pay-go, which means any new mandatory program has to be paid for. Also we are doing a discretionary program — the Senate is not inclined to do that, apparently, but we are.
 
“In fact just last week I had a hearing that the chair let me organize to push for performance-based budgeting again. I was a big proponent of that in Oregon. I finally had a hearing on that in the budget committee and had the president’s chief performance officer in and he had a similar hearing on the Senate side.
 
“I plan to get together with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who has similar interests as I do in the small business arena, as well as performance-based budgeting and see if we can’t start a new culture in Washington, D.C. So, Kurt Schrader really hasn’t changed at all, there is a lot of gibberish out there that is frankly, uninformed. You are going to see me every bit as tough as I was when I was a state legislator.
 
“Even the war supplemental, the war budget, we had outcomes listed on there.
 
“There were about five that the house had and one that the Senate had, so there are six outcomes that we are going to be judging the success or failure of any strategy in Iraq or Afghanistan.
 
“I think that’s good. I mean instead of just budgeting by anecdote or last call or that sort of thing, we are going to be smart about the taxpayer’s money, and frankly the men and women we send over there.”
 
For the second part of Patrick Johnson’s one-on-one interview with Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Oregon Fifth District), see our Dec. 5 printed edition.

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