Opinion
4A
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Other Views
Oregon Republicans
must stop saving
Democrats from
themselves
O
regon Senate Republicans have engaged in
four legislative walkouts in less than two
years. Democrats and Republicans alike have
used quorum denial as a negotiating chip when all else
has failed, but this nuclear option should not be used
frivolously.
The first Republican walkout in 2019 occurred
over a reprisal
of the gross
receipts tax,
deceptively
EVAN BRYAN
dubbed by
POLITICAL COLUMNIST
Democrats
as “The Stu-
dent Success
Editor’s Note
Act.” The pro-
posal com-
Do you have a point you’d
pletely disre-
like to make or an issue you
garded the will
feel strongly about? Submit a
of Oregonians,
letter to the editor or a guest
who killed a
column.
similar ballot
measure in
2016 by over 350,000 votes. When Republicans said
the bill should be decided by Oregonians instead of
politicians, Democrats said “no.” The first walkout of
2019 ensued.
The bill easily passed the Oregon House, but in the
Senate, Democrats could not afford to lose any sup-
port — needing all 18 of their members to vote “yes.”
In some cases, common-sense Democrats were threat-
ened with expulsion from committee assignments
and other political “punishments.” To get Republicans
back, Democrats agreed to kill their own gun safety
measures and a vaccine mandate. Democrats then
passed the tax hike and denied Oregonians a say.
Republicans had a small “win” by Democrats drop-
ping some of their agenda, at the cost of a tax hike.
Senate Democrats did not have the votes to pass the
vaccine mandate, as it was very controversial in many
of their districts. The gun legislation, including ban-
ning pepper spray in public buildings, would have
also been massively unpopular and likely challenged
in the courts or forced to the ballot. Had these passed,
it would have encouraged Republican turnout in the
coming election. In talking with a former Republican
leader, who served in the majority, they remarked,
“Republicans just saved the Democrats from
themselves.”
Following the gross receipts tax debacle, Dem-
ocrats were intent on pushing through a phony cli-
mate proposal, known as cap and trade. Many who
have worked at the Oregon Capitol for years had never
seen such opposition to attempts to refer an impactful
policy change to voters. A little less than a decade
before, Democrats, with some Republican support,
referred tax measures (66 and 67) to the ballot.
At the time, it was unclear if Democrats would fall
short of the 16 votes needed for passage, so Repub-
licans walked. That walkout generated international
media attention and gave rise to historic grassroots
engagement at the Capitol. After several days of a
standoff, the Senate president announced that cap and
trade didn’t have the votes to pass and the session con-
cluded over a marathon weekend at the Capitol. Dem-
ocrats and the governor then blamed Republicans for
the failure of their own cap-and-trade climate pro-
posal — they didn’t actually have the votes within
their own party to pass it.
Cap and trade then returned in the 2020 ses-
sion. Republicans requested to schedule the proposal
toward the end of the session to consider immediately
pressing legislation. Democrats refused and would not
compromise. Senate Republicans, joined by House
Republicans, walked and the 2020 session never
resumed.
Denying quorum can be a useful, short-term tactic
for a minority party, but it is not a strategy and the
long-term consequences are dire. It is blunderous.
I am alarmed the politics behind the walkouts are
still occurring during a pandemic. It must end.
As Oregonians, it’s time to elect new leaders who
don’t consider compromise a dirty word. Having the
longest serving Senate president and House speaker in
state history might sound impressive, but the reality
says otherwise.
Democrats run the show in Salem. It’s time for
Republicans in Oregon to make a strong case to Ore-
gonians with solutions to improve lives and liveli-
hoods. They need to stop giving Democrats cover. It’s
time for the party in charge to be held accountable.
———
Evan Bryan served as a legislative director at the
Oregon State Senate. He holds a master’s in legislative
affairs from George Washington University.
Other Views
Hail to the presidential Punter in Chief
MICHAEL
REAGAN
POLITICAL CONSULTANT
H
e may not be the fastest pres-
ident on his feet we’ve ever
had.
He may bore you to death com-
pared to the last president.
But I will tell you, if anyone in the
NFL is looking for a punter, Joe Biden
is your man.
The president didn’t blow up or
melt down at his first, much-antici-
pated and ultimately embarrassing
formal presidential press conference.
But on Thursday, March 25, he
proved one thing with a doubt — he’s
not America’s quarterback in chief.
He’s our punter in chief.
For a little over an hour President
Biden ducked the mostly friendly
questions of 10 cherry-picked jour-
nalists and read large chunks of his
answers on foreign policy from a
briefing book.
He gave vague, garbled or outra-
geous answers about immigration,
Afghanistan, China, voting rights and
the filibuster that generated zero tough
follow-ups from the liberal White
House press corps.
He punted on how he was going to
fix the immigration crisis he’s caused
at the border.
He punted on what the United
States should do about the economic
and military threat of China and when
he was going to get America out of
Afghanistan.
He punted on when his adminis-
tration will allow the media and their
cameras to get access to the over-
crowded border facilities in Texas
where thousands of illegal immigrants
and unaccompanied migrant children
await processing.
The only thing President Biden
didn’t really punt on was killing the
filibuster.
The “relic of the Jim Crow era” as
he and its new enemies now call it, is
the same parliamentary tool he sup-
ported for 40 years when he was a
Senator.
It’s the same weapon his party used
aggressively and often in the Senate
during the Trump years when it was
in the minority.
Chuck Schumer used it to —
among many other things — block
construction of the Wall, change the
Cares Act and halt Sen. Tim Scott’s
police reform bill.
But now “Wide-awoke” Joe and
Schumer want to get rid of the fili-
buster so their party can ram “pro-
gressive” legislation through Con-
gress that will change the United
States forever.
No member of the White House
press cheerleading squad had the
courage to remind Biden about that
eulogy he gave for his beloved col-
league, Sen. Robert Byrd, the former
KKK member who was a star on
the Democrat Party’s team of racist
Southern senators who filibustered
the 1964 Civil Rights bill.
Meanwhile, talk about softballs
tossed underhand by little league
journalists.
PBS White House reporter Yam-
iche Alcindor prefaced her blatant
pitch for ending the filibuster by
referring to Biden as “a moral and
decent” man.
There were no questions at all
about the COVID-19 pandemic or
vaccines or gun control.
And though Biden left many open-
ings for follow-up questions by saying
looney-tune things like President
Trump sent migrant families back to
Mexico to starve and a majority of
Republicans support him, they were
not asked.
Say whatever bad you want about
Trump, he always called on his nem-
esis Jim Acosta of CNN and he
wasn’t afraid to take questions from
anyone.
And where Biden seemed to need
a briefing book to answer many of the
questions, none of his predecessors
— Trump, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton,
Bush 43 and Obama — ever did.
Besides punting whenever he was
in doubt, Biden took half a dozen
cheap shots at President Trump (he
was among friends, so he knew he
was safe).
Based on their friendly ques-
tions, the White House press corps
showed that they haven’t exactly been
working on their fastballs while Pres-
ident Biden was hiding from them for
two months.
For instance, it should have made
big headlines and sparked lots of fol-
low-up questions when Biden went
back on his campaign promise and
said he expects to run again in 2024,
but it didn’t.
The bottom line is, with those
briefing books and basic punting
skills, everyone who watched Biden’s
press conference could have done the
press conference too.
———
Michael Reagan, the son of
President Ronald Reagan, is a
political consultant and the author
of “Lessons My Father Taught Me:
The Strength, Integrity and Faith of
Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of
the email service reagan.com
and president of The Reagan
Legacy Foundation.