Eugene weekly., January 21, 2021, Page 9, Image 9

Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President
WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS
By opposing TARP, DeFazio says he was a “pariah” of
the party. But years later, he says Rep. Nancy Pelosi told
him he was right to oppose it, and if the party had listened
to DeFazio, they might not have lost the House. Before
Summers got involved and added the “tax cuts too small
to notice” to TARP, he says, the bill had money for real
infrastructure jobs. This time around, Democrats have
to invest in Americans, he says.
“We need to act quickly and show the Americans
that there are real results that will not be trickle-down
economics or a pittance in everybody’s pockets,” he says,
“but actual employment opportunities with real wages and
benefits for millions of Americans who have lost their jobs,
whose jobs aren’t coming back, living in depressed areas.”
And infrastructure is a key part of that plan, he adds.
Based on his campaign promises, Trump treated
infrastructure like a siren song during his presidential
campaigns and term. He frequently talked about how he
wanted to invest in infrastructure, but as leader of the
Republican Party, he never demonstrated any interest
in pushing anything through a Republican-controlled
Congress. In fact, national news outlets such as Los An-
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
geles Times reported that Trump stormed out of a May
2019 meeting on infrastructure with Democratic Party
members of Congress because of House investigations
over whether he had blackmailed Ukraine leaders, which
resulted in his first impeachment.
On July 1, 2020, the House passed DeFazio’s infra-
structure bill, called The Moving Forward Bill, but then
Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell never introduced
it to the Senate. If passed, it would have invested $1.2 tril-
lion into the U.S. economy, putting money in areas such
as zero-emission buses, affordable housing, renewable
energy — and more.
Six months later, DeFazio has that bill ready for re-in-
troduction to the House. He says officials with Biden’s team
have seen the bill and so has Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s pick
for secretary of transportation. “They are familiar with
the bill I moved through the House last year, which was
a massive investment that would have created millions
of jobs while also taking very aggressive steps against
climate change and fossil fuel pollution from transporta-
tion, which is the largest emitting factor,” DeFazio says.
“I’m certainly open to enhancing or adding provisions
to my legislation, but they indicate they think it’s a very
good starting point.”
Based on Biden’s Jan. 14 speech, the first legislation
that Biden wants Congress to pass is a COVID-19 relief
bill. DeFazio says he’ll be involved with certain aspects
of that legislation related to “transit, rail, aviation, ports,
airports and other entities that are suffering revenue
losses and massive layoffs.” After that, DeFazio says the
next legislation would be a recovery package along the
lines of The Moving Forward Act.
The legislation doesn’t just create work for the con-
struction industry but also engineering, design and
manufacturing jobs, the congressman says. And the trans-
portation committee has the strongest “buy America”
provision in all of government.
Many Trump voters in 2020 were persuaded to vote
for him because of the economy, according to exit polls
from The Washington Post. If Democrats can demonstrate
they can create jobs, DeFazio says “a lot of those people
fall off his bandwagon.”
By scattering federal investments in economically
depressed areas throughout the U.S., such as rural
parts of Oregon, and if the Democrats move fast enough,
the Moving Forward Act could change the Democratic
Party’s image for some of those 74 million people who
voted for Trump in 2020 out of anger for being left out
of economic policies of Congress and past presidential
administrations. “They’re not white supremacist fascists
who invaded the Capitol, they’re just people who are
desperate,” DeFazio says.
But if the Democrats in Congress had the political
capital to only pass one piece of legislation, DeFazio says
it has to be H.R. 1, which would address voting rights in
the U.S. He says it would help mitigate the Republican
Party’s advantage in future elections.
According to the bill’s language from its 2019
introduction, it addresses voters’ rights, such as voter
registration, voting access and limits removing voters
from voter rolls; regulate campaign spending, including
expanding a ban on foreign money in elections; and require
presidential candidates and their running mates to submit
up to 10 years of tax returns (which is clearly influenced
by Trump’s refusal to share his).
WYDEN IN THE SENATE SEAT
DeFazio isn’t the only Oregon politician to have a
committee chair in D.C. Sen. Ron Wyden will serve as chair
of the Senate Finance Committee now that the Democratic
Party has 50 seats and a vice president to break the tie.
The finance committee has oversight on taxation and
revenue issues. “It’s the most sought after committee in
the Senate,” Wyden tells Eugene Weekly.
Over the next two years, Democrats in the Senate
will have to juggle Trump’s trial, new legislation and
Republicans who will try to get in the way of policymaking.
But Wyden says he is optimistic about the new leadership
in the White House: “After the past four years, I’m eager
for this fresh start and a new day.” Like DeFazio, Wyden
says it’s important that the party has learned its lesson
from 2009 — because you can’t hope to have a second
chance at running Congress. “Congress in ’09 didn’t pass
another economic relief package after the recovery act,
and Democrats lost control in 2010,” he says. “You’d better
not take your foot off the gas in the middle of economic
recovery.”
Wyden says he’s proposing triggers that tie unem-
ployment benefits to economic conditions on the ground.
“We saw the need for that in December,” he says. “We
had millions of families at risk of losing all their income
the day after Christmas because Mitch McConnell was
blocking an extension — that’s no way to run a country.”
Wyden says he’s spent some time with Biden’s pick
for secretary of the treasury, Janet Yellen, whom Obama
nominated to serve as chair of the Federal Reserve over
Summers after pressure from liberal Democrats in 2013.
“I think we’re very much on the same wavelength of those
issues,” he adds.
As chair of the finance committee, he says he wants
to ensure every American pays their taxes, including the
very wealthy. He points to the disparity between working
Americans like nurses on the COVID-19 front line and the
billionaires who can defer their taxes “to the point where
they pay hardly anything at all.”
And he says he wants to throw all 44 fossil fuel tax
breaks away. In their place, he wants to have tax breaks
for clean energy, clean transportation fuel and energy
efficiency. “We’ll get more green for less green,” he adds.
‘I played basketball in
college. I can dribble
with both hands and
you can focus on the
economic reform
agenda and ensuring
there’s accountability.’
— RON WYDEN, U.S. SENATOR
Wyden says working in a Senate that’s split 50-50
means he’ll have to work across the aisle like he did when
pushing for the additional $600 in unemployment per
week in the CARES Act. “I was able to get the Trump ad-
ministration — not the Republican senators — to go along,
and we built a coalition so we couldn’t be stopped on the
Senate floor,” he says. “The unemployment expansion
that brought more than $2 billion to Oregon and helped
thousands of Oregonians make rent and pay groceries
actually lowered the poverty rate in America. I stayed
with it until we had enough support to get it passed.”
And Wyden will push for another round of $600
unemployment checks in an upcoming COVID relief bill.
In addition to economic relief legislation, Democrats
also have to deal with Trump’s trial whenever the House
decides to deliver the impeachment papers to the upper
chamber of Congress. Wyden says although McConnell
has signaled he approved of Trump’s recent impeach-
ment, he’s also given mixed signals on it. But Wyden says
the Senate can do both economic recovery and deal with
Trump’s trial at the same time. “I played basketball in
college. I can dribble with both hands and you can focus
on the economic reform agenda and ensuring there’s
accountability,” he says.
J A N U A R Y
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