Eugene weekly., October 13, 2011, Page 12, Image 12

DeFazio Does It
DEFAZIO TAKES ON THE FRUMIOUS BANDERSNATCH AND OTHER OREGON ISSUES
C
ongressman Peter DeFazio is taking his vorpal
sword in hand again. In this time of political
confusion that pits Tea Partiers against the
Democrats and the Dems against themselves,
and when half of what politicians say makes no
more sense than Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,”
Oregon’s longtime 4th District representative takes great
pleasure in cutting through the political confusion.
His Oct. 5 Occupy Wall Street-inspired diatribe on the
economy and the fi nancial bailout was vintage DeFazio.
It’s not often that CSPAN coverage spawns a viral hit, but
the clip of DeFazio railing against Wall Street and accusing
fi nanciers of having “gambled our economy into oblivion”
is giving it a shot despite a lack of media coverage.
If it seems like DeFazio’s last congressional race just
ended, it did. Members of the House of Representatives
are elected every two years, while senators run every
six years. There’s little more than a year to go before the
2012 election, which looks to be a rematch with DeFazio
running against Tea Party Republican Art Robinson. The
fray has already begun.
EW sat down with DeFazio to hear what he had to say
about everything from Wall Street to county payments to
the upcoming elections.
DeFazio on the Economy
The real DeFazio is pretty confi dent he could get the
government back in working order, if given the chance.
And for this senior member of the House Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee, infrastructure is the name of
the game. Obama’s jobs bill is OK, he says, and better news
is that the president has been stepping up lately,
“This is kind of like the guy we selected and elected
and voted for, for like two weeks now, and that’s great,”
DeFazio says. “He has said he isn’t going to just take cuts,
and he wants investment, so that’s good.”
But the congressman doesn’t hold back on his critique
of the president and his administration’s handling of the
economic crisis: “If you look at the bill itself, it’s 11 percent
infrastructure, about another 7 percent school construction.
Basically, building things is less than 20 percent of the bill,
and 57 percent of the bill is tax cuts. And tax cuts don’t
work.”
“I like the fact he’s fi ghting for something,” he says of
Obama. “I like the fact that some of it is infrastructure and
schools, but it’s not enough.”
DeFazio says he’s “taken a lot of fl ak recently for being
too critical of Obama.” But he says to his own critics,
“I’m trying to help. He has to succeed. Democrats have
by Camilla Mortensen
to succeed so we don’t wind up with someone like (Texas
Gov. Rick) Perry as President.”
According to DeFazio, we have been cutting taxes
since 2001, and we’ve expended 5 trillion dollars on them
and doubled the debt. “We have the economy of tax cuts
based on a quaint theory of economics that was relevant
when I was in college, which was a very long time ago,”
the 64-year-old congressman says.
Former president George W. Bush tried to solve the
problem by writing big checks to a lot of people, DeFazio
says. The idea was that folks would spend money and buy
things. But “if people buy stuff, it was made in China,”
he says. Or people used their refund to pay down debt or
save. He says Obama’s former top economic adviser Larry
Summers’ solution was to give so little money that people
won’t know they are getting it and thus they would go ahead
and spend it. “I said ‘Larry, that’s really bad economics and
really bad politics,’” DeFazio says, “‘but other than that it’s
a good idea.’”
DeFazio made headlines in 2009 when he suggested
in an MSNBC interview that President Obama should fi re
Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
If he could choose a new principal economic adviser,
it would be 2001 Nobel Prize in economics winner
Joseph Stiglitz. DeFazio also says that he’d go with 2008
“DeFazio is one of the few congresspersons that is with
the 99 percent,” writes one of the commenters on the less-
than-four-minute general speech before the House in which
DeFazio took swipes at Republicans, fi nanciers and the Tea
Party. “There’s been this amazing political jiu-jitsu where
somehow the Republicans aided by the Koch Brothers
who subsidized the Tea Party have changed the narrative,”
DeFazio says in the clip. “It was the government. It was
over regulation. Over regulation?” he asks sarcastically.
“Oh come on guys, there were no rules; they gambled our
economy into oblivion.”
He continues, “But now this fall, something’s happen-
ing. Something in this land is happening, I call it the Amer-
ican Awakening. The occupation of Wall Street, which is
now spreading to other cites.” DeFazio defends the pro-
testers against critics who say they ought to be looking for
jobs: “Their future has been stolen from them … No, they
don’t have jobs! What are we doing to create jobs and give
these kids a future in this country?
“It is time to begin to deal meaningfully with these
problems in this country,” DeFazio says.
This isn’t the fi rst time DeFazio has stood up and yelled
about what he believes, and it’s not just Oregonians who
have noticed his tendency to get a little hot under the collar
and go forth kicking ass and taking names. Back in 2009
the Oregon Democrat came to national attention not just
when he voted against President Obama’s stimulus bill, but
also when Obama, in response to DeFazio’s call for more
infrastructure spending, said to him, “Don’t think we’re not
keeping score, brother.”
News-based satire newspaper and website The Onion
did a feature on DeFazio in November 2010 in which the
representative was the sole survivor of a literal congressional
bloodbath, with lines like “the 12-term Oregon congressman
and de facto leader of the free world acknowledged that
although many challenges lie ahead — including explaining
his situation to foreign nations, fi guring out how to print
money, and combating the marauding bands of Tea Party
activists now violently patrolling the streets of Washington
— he remains confi dent that he will soon be able to get the
U.S. government back in working order.”
12
OCTOBER 13, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
P H OTO B Y TOD D C O O PE R
American Awakening
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