NEWS
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
A9
Walden questions Trump’s border wall emergency
“Shouldn’t we try to
reduce the fuel load to cut
those catastrophic fires?” he
said.
Bob Haechrel, also from
The Dalles, said he had
called Walden’s office, want-
ing to understand if there
were parts of the Green New
Deal on which he felt he
could work with Democrats.
“To your point on the
Green New Deal, it’s a res-
olution, not actually imple-
mented legislation,” Walden
said. “Clearly, there are
things we can work together
on.”
But he said he was
against some components of
the proposed resolution.
“If the goal is to put down
the cattle industry in 10
years, I’m not for that,” he
said. “If the goal is to put us
all on high-speed rail, I don’t
think that will work very
well. I don’t want the federal
government taking over that
much,” he said.
By Jayati Ramakrishnan
and Phil Wright
East Oregonian
U.S. Rep. Greg Walden’s
town hall meeting Mon-
day morning in Boardman
was his first public appear-
ance in the area since being
re-elected to Oregon’s Con-
gressional District 2. By
noon he was in Pendleton
for a speaking appearance
with the Pendleton Rotary
Club.
During the two events
he touched on immigra-
tion, energy, the government
shutdown and more.
Wall emergency
The Republican con-
gressman talked about the
recent turmoil in Washing-
ton, D.C., as President Don-
ald Trump shut down the
government for 35 days
over funding for a wall at
the U.S.-Mexico border.
Walden said he broke with
his party on some aspects of
the shutdown, saying he felt
employees at agencies, such
as the Forest Service and
Department of Agriculture,
shouldn’t be suffering over a
border security issue.
He said he was pleased to
see a deal to avoid another
shutdown and fund the
federal government that
included money for 55 miles
of new border wall but also
money for humanitarian aid
on the border, more border
agents and to help handle the
increase in years-long back-
log of asylum seekers.
Audience members asked
Walden how he would vote
if Congress tried to stop
Trump in his declaration of
a national emergency over
the border wall. He said
he was against executive
overreach and did not like
it when President Barrack
Obama made that kind of
end around Congress.
“If what Trump is doing
exceeds the authority Con-
gress has given him, I’ll
have a big problem with it,”
he told the Rotary audience.
The other problem, he
pointed out, is the prece-
dent this sets. What hap-
pens, Walded asked, when
the next president uses exec-
utive power to declare an
emergency?
“I wish he hadn’t done it,
quite frankly,” Walden said.
Still, Walden stopped
short of saying for certain he
would oppose Trump, and
Walden called the Trump
administration’s policy of
separating children from
their parents at the border “a
real mistake,” but said he too
supports securing the south-
ern border.
“We see people coming
for a better life, but we also
see people coming across
Debt and pot
Staff photo by Kathy Aney/East Oregonian
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, greets a veteran on Monday before a town hall in Boardman.
Staff photo by Kathy Aney/East Oregonian
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, speaks about former Port
of Morrow Director Gary Neal on Monday at a town hall in
Boardman before giving him an honorary plaque.
for human trafficking, drug
trafficking,” he said.
But he said border control
had always been a bipartisan
issue, and cited the Secure
Fence Act of 2006, which
authorized about 700 miles
of fence along the south-
ern border. He said several
Democrats, including Ore-
gon Sen. Ron Wyden and
then-Congresswoman Dar-
lene Hooley, voted for that
bill. Walden also said the
country needs an immigra-
tion system that provides for
workforce needs and a path
to citizenship.
Changing climate
Walden also talked about
his goals for forest manage-
ment and reducing forest
fires in Oregon.
An audience member
in Boardman, Steve Mur-
ray, noted in response to the
recently proposed Green
New Deal, Walden had said
Republicans have better
ideas on climate change.
“But on the Energy and
Commerce Committee, you
didn’t hold any hearings on
climate change,” said Mur-
ray, who had traveled from
The Dalles to hear Walden.
“The biggest reason we’re
having forest fires isn’t for-
est management — it’s cli-
mate change. Something
needs to happen.”
Walden said he agreed
something needed to happen,
but said he focused more on
expanding the energy grid to
use more renewable energy.
“Climate change is real,”
he said, and the question is
what to do about it. He said
he comes down on the side
of innovation to provide the
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answers. He pointed to the
recently announced Wheat-
ridge project, which will be
built in Morrow County to
combine large-scale wind,
solar and battery storage
power.
“This is the kind of inno-
vation I’m for,” he said.
“If we don’t have the right
capacity, we can’t put
renewable energy into it.”
And the U.S. has a
responsibility to tackle cli-
mate change.
“It should be us,” he said.
“We helped create this mess,
we should help clean it up.”
He also said while he
thinks climate change is
a factor in forest fires,
he focused on forest
management.
The national debt reach-
ing $22 trillion is a con-
cern, Walden said, but the
real problem are programs,
such as Medicare and pay-
ing the interest on the debt
as opposed to defense
spending. As Americans, he
said, “we’re going to have
to have a pretty serious con-
versation” about the federal
government not funding as
many programs.
And Walden is changing
his tune on marijuana. One
propane dealer in southern
Oregon said the government
needs to change something,
Walden said, because his cli-
ents pay in stacks of cash.
Walden said he is not “quite
there” in legalizing canna-
bis, but maybe the federal
government could manage it
like alcohol.
But items, such as mari-
juana gummy bears, smack
of the tobacco industry’s
Joe Camel methods to lure
younger users, he said, and
if the feds did treat mari-
juana like booze, states are
not going to receive fed-
eral help with treatment
programs.
Walden will return to
Umatilla County for a town
hall at the Eastern Oregon
Trade and Event Center,
Hermiston, on March 15 at
4 p.m.
(next to Wallowa
Memorial Hospital)
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