Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 14, 2017)
Page 10A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Tuesday, November 14, 2017 Bipartisan analysis: Senate bill would hike taxes for 13.8M WASHINGTON (AP) — Promoted as needed relief for the middle class, the Senate Republican tax over- haul actually would increase taxes for some 13.8 million moderate-income American households, a bipartisan analysis showed Monday. The assessment by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation emerged as the Senate’s tax-writing committee began wading through the measure, working toward the first major revamp of the tax system in some 30 years. Barging into the carefully calibrated work that House and Senate Republicans have done, President Donald Trump called for a steeper tax cut for wealthy Americans and pressed GOP leaders to add a contentious health care change to the already complex mix. Trump’s latest tweet injected a dose of uncer- tainty into the process as the Republicans try to deliver on his top legislative priority. He commended GOP leaders for getting the tax legislation closer to passage in recent weeks and then said, “Cut top rate to 35% w/all of the rest going AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., left, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, criticizes the Republican tax reform plan while Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, center, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, far right, lis- ten to his opening statement as the panel begins work overhauling the nation’s tax code, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday. to middle income cuts?” That puts him at odds with the House legislation that leaves the top rate at 39.6 percent and the Senate bill as written, with the top rate at 38.5 percent. Trump also said, “Now how about ending the unfair & highly unpopular indi- vidual mandate in (Obama) care and reducing taxes even further?” Overall, the legislation would deeply cut corporate taxes, double the standard deduction used by most Americans, and limit or repeal completely the federal deduction for state and local property, income and sales taxes. It carries high political stakes for Trump and Repub- lican leaders in Congress, who view passage of tax cuts as critical to the GOP preserving its majorities at the polls next year. With few votes to spare, Republican leaders hope to finalize a tax overhaul by Christmas and send the legislation to Trump for his signature. The key House leader on the effort, Rep. Kevin Brady, said he’s “very confident” that Republicans “do and will have the votes to pass” the measure this week. Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he doesn’t expect major changes to the bill as it moves to a final vote in the House. Still, he said Trump’s call for removing the requirement to have health insurance as part of the tax agreement “remains under consideration.” Trump and the Repub- licans have promoted the legislation as a boon to the middle class, bringing tax relief to people with moderate incomes and boosting the economy to create new jobs. “This bill is not a massive tax cut for the wealthy. ... This is not a big giveaway to corporations,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, insisted as the panel had its first day of debate on the Senate measure. NAKATA: The uninsulated barracks lacked plumbing, heating Continued from 1A swallows darting around the place. His family was ushered to a 14-by-19 enclosure furnished with four Army cots. Canvas bags filled with hay served as mattresses. Guards carried M-1 rifles with fixed bayonets. Barbed wire surrounded the barns. In September, they were bused to Union Station and herded onto trains. “MPs ordered us to pull the window shades down,” Nakata said. “We were not to see where we were going.” They got off the train in Idaho and were transported to their new home about 20 miles northeast of Twin Falls. As they got closer to the Minidoka internment camp, their hearts sank. “All we could see was a sea of sagebrush and hundreds and hundreds of Army barracks,” he said. Nakata still recalls all the numbers. The family was assigned to block 34, barrack 6, unit A. They were family no. 15066. The tar paper-and-wood structure wasn’t insulated and didn’t have plumbing and heating. The temperature dipped to 22 degrees below zero that winter. “My sister and I put on every piece of clothing we had and huddled under the blanket waiting for morning to arrive,” Nakata said. Thinking back, he marveled at the resourceful- ness of the Japanese interned at Minidoka. Former teachers started a school. Doctors and dentists opened clinics and a hospital. They dug a swimming pool and started a baseball league. Staff photo by Kathy Aney George Nakata, who spoke Saturday about his experiences as a young boy in a Jap- anese internment camp, admires a horse blanket he received from Roberta Conner, director of the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute. In school, Nakata remembers “we had to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag for liberty and justice for all as I looked out the window at the barbed wire and the guard station.” Some of the families displayed banners with gold stars on their doors, indicating they had lost a son in World War II. The soldiers had fought in the 442nd Regiment, made up of Japanese Americans. “There was no regiment decorated more than the 442nd,” Nakata said, “with over 9,486 purple hearts and 21 Medals of Honor.” When the war ended, the Minidoka detainees each got $25 and a train ride back to where they came from. Japantown was no more, however. Nakata’s former entrepreneur father got a job making mashed potatoes at a restaurant. The other family members picked beans and berries. George studied interna- tional trade, worked for the Port of Portland and then started his own consulting business. Despite his family’s incarceration, Nakata, a military veteran, reveres the principles on which the United States is founded. “If I was president, I would require all Americans to read the Constitution every Fourth of July,” he said. “The Constitution is a wonderful document.” He urges Americans to consider their nation’s roots. “America is a country of immigrants — many, many immigrants,” Nakata said. “Unless you are a direct descendant of an indigenous person, you are the descen- dant of an immigrant.” He quoted from a verse engraved onto the Statue of Liberty. “On the base collecting dust is a short poem written by a Jewish lady named Emma Lazarus,” he said. “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ Isn’t that what America is all about?” After the talk, many of the audience members toured Tamastslikt’s current exhibit on another of the internment camps in Tule Lake, California. “The Art of Survival: Enduring the Turmoil of Tule Lake” runs through Jan. 6. ——— Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810. Continued from 1A Contributed photo Anson Fairbank undergoes treatment in September. will shuck their patrol blues and wait tables. “I think right now we’re going to have a ton of offi- cers,” she said. She also said the Hamley staff was “awesome” for their willingness to give up their tips for the causes, and DG Gifts & Screen Printing, Pendleton, is donating T-shirts for the event. Wolverton said he did not have figures in front of him but recalled the department last November raised around $5,000, and the night of waiting tables brought in around $1,200 alone. All of the tips and donations, he said, go to the Cancer Society and Anson Strong. Wolverton, like most in Pendleton’s uniform, is typically clean-shaven. Working over the past few days, he said, several people he encountered commented or asked him about the beard he is sprouting. “Most agencies even now-a-days have a shave policy and regulations on grooming, and Pendleton is no different,” he said. Cancer is the disease that touches everyone’s lives in some way, he said, and the whiskers work as a catalyst to start conversations about cancer and what people can do to donate. No Shave November, he said, is another way for Pendleton police to help the community. To find out more about No Shave November or to donate, visit the Pendleton Police Department’s website at ppd.pendleton.or.us. ——— Contact Phil Wright at pwright@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0833. Neither bill includes a repeal of the so-called individual mandate of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the requirement that Americans get health insurance or face a penalty. Several top Republicans have warned that including the provision, as Trump wants, would draw opposition and make passage tougher. A key moderate Repub- lican in the Senate said it’s too early to say whether including repeal of the insurance mandate would cost her vote on the tax bill. “I’m going to see what the Finance Committee winds up with and what we do on the (Senate) floor,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Collins did say she opposed Trump’s idea of reducing the top tax rate for the wealthiest earners. Among the biggest differences in the two bills that have emerged: the House bill allows homeowners to deduct up to $10,000 in prop- erty taxes while the Senate proposal unveiled by GOP leaders last week eliminates the entire deduction. Both versions would eliminate deductions for state and local income taxes and sales taxes. PORT: The goal is a sustainable service that at least breaks even Continued from 1A POLICE: Recent bone marrow test revealed Anson is cancer free have a 2-year-old son, Anson, who had leukemia. “We just think it’s so amazing that they chose Anson and his fight with leukemia,” said Adrienne Fairbank. Her son completed 29 days of treatment, and a recent bone marrow test revealed his body was cancer free. Adrienne said the doctor’s expected that result, and while it is good news, Anson’s leukemia has a pattern of recurring. Monday evening they arrived in Portland for Anson’s weekly doctor’s appointment, she said, and he will continue on the path of treatment for three years. She also said the outpouring the Pendleton community has shown for her son feels overwhelming. Police assistant Dianna Melton helped select the Cancer Society branch and the Fairbank family. She said the department’s main fundraiser is Friday, Dec. 1, 5-8 p.m., at the Hamley Steakhouse, where officers Hatch also downplayed the analysis by congres- sional tax experts showing a tax increase for several million U.S. households under the Senate proposal. Hatch said “a relatively small minority of taxpayers could see a slight increase in their taxes.” The committee’s senior Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, said the legisla- tion has become “a massive handout to multinational corporations and a bonanza for tax cheats and powerful political donors.” The analysis found that the Senate measure would actually increase taxes in 2019 for 13.8 million households earning less than $200,000 a year. That group, about 10 percent of all U.S. taxpayers, would face tax increases of $100 to $500 in 2019. There also would be increases greater than $500 for a number of taxpayers, especially those with incomes between $75,000 and $200,000. By 2025, 21.4 million households would have steeper tax bills. The analysts previously found a similar magnitude of tax increases under the House bill. containers moved through the Port of Portland, taking agricultural goods from around the Northwest to Asia and European markets. Containers were packed with crops like peas, beans and lentils from eastern Washington and central Idaho’s Palouse region, barged down the Columbia River and trucked, with hay, from the Willamette Valley. The region’s shippers imported things, too. Fred Meyer grocery stores served as a solid base. But the region’s small businesses relied on the port, too, bringing in goods designed in cities like Portland and manufactured in Asia. In March 2015, the region’s container service changed dramatically. First, South Korean-based Hanjin pulled out. Shortly after, German-based Hapag- Lloyd said it too was done with Portland. Together, the two carriers represented between 95-99 percent of the Port’s container service. In May 2016, Washing- ton-based Westwood Ship- ping announced it would no longer make its monthly calls at the Port of Portland. Westwood’s decision left Portland the lone major West Coast city without container ship service. The carriers complained it was taking too long to load and unload ships because of a nearly three- year local labor dispute between the ILWU and its then-employer, ICTSI Oregon. Being about 100 miles upriver from the coast, Portland is already a tough sell, compared to the bigger ports of Seattle and Tacoma. The added local labor challenge proved not to be worth it to the carriers. In March, the port and ICTSI Oregon dissolved their 25-year lease. ICTSI paid the port about $11.5 million in cash. It also left about $8 million in equip- ment at Terminal 6, known as T6. Now, with Swire’s decision to restart container ship service next year, the Port of Portland is trying to demonstrate that its labor problems are a thing of the past. “This is really walking before you can run,” said Robinhold, the port’s CEO. “What we’re really trying to do is show we can get T6 working again.” Robinhold said he’s spent time personally with the unions that work at the port, particularly the ILWU. “We have essentially resolved all of the lawsuits between the Port of Portland and the Long- shoremen,” he said. “What we’ve essentially said is we want to push the reset button, get going again and really give it a try. And if we can’t, we’re going to have to have some harder conversation about what to do with T6. This is really our last meaningful chance to get container service started again.” The ILWU Local 40 in Portland declined to comment. With ICTSI Oregon out of the equation, the port’s resolved a sticking point for the ILWU, which said it objected to the way the company conducted busi- ness. “What we are really needing to prove now is that we can make it work and that it can make money; at least that it can break even,” Robinhold said. He said the port has identified five or six smaller carriers that could be a good fit. The governor’s office has chipped in $250,000 from the state’s strategic reserve fund. It’ll help pay for bar pilots who navigate vessels up the Columbia River. Robinhold said it takes two bar pilots and costs carriers $20,000 more to call on Portland compared to other ports. The goal is a sustainable service that at least breaks even and supports the needs of shippers in Oregon and southwest Washington. A year from now, Robinhold said he could see a “couple of thousand” containers per month moving through the Port of Portland with service that hits some “key Asian markets.” By mid-2018, Robinhold said he expects the port will be able to show it’s up and running, which he hopes will lead to more carriers and larger ships. But the days of weekly service from a major global carrier may be something of the past. “The large weekly call may not happen,” he said. “The challenge of us is to really figure out what the niche looks like. We know that we’re not one of these mega ports. So, is our niche weekly service? Maybe. Is it every other week? Prob- ably, at least. So, really the challenge for us is what’s sustainable.” Swire’s first ship is booked, carrying a combi- nation of containers and break-bulk, Robinhold said. The shipment includes Daimler’s Western Star Trucks that are manufac- tured in Portland. They’re bound for Australia. Agri- cultural goods are also on the ship, he said. Congestion in Seat- tle-Tacoma and increased costs of getting containers trucked there could buoy Portland’s efforts. Carriers are operating under tight windows and need to get in and out of ports quickly. It’s equally critical for shippers to know when their goods will arrive for customers both in the Northwest and overseas.
