S moke S ignals
JULY 15, 2017
9
'This, for me, is a fight for the ages'
TOWN HALL continued
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to do it,” Wyden said, adding that
he thinks a possible way to fund
such a system would be to allow
employers, who cover about 160
million Americans, to allocate the
money they would spend on health
care to a single-payer system and
then allow the employer to write
the money off on their taxes.
Wyden said he thinks it makes
sense to try a single-payer health
care system in the states before
trying to overhaul a national health
care system that accounts for one-
sixth of the economy.
Section 1332 of the Affordable
Care Act allows states to apply for a
State Innovation Waiver to pursue
“innovative strategies” for provid-
ing their residents with high qual-
ity, affordable health insurance.
“It’s not a question of defending
the status quo,” Wyden said. “It’s
indefensible. It’s a question of how
do we get from where we are going
forward, and I think we have found
a way to do it.”
Wyden also told Grand Ronde
resident Patrice Qualman, who at-
tended with her wheelchair-bound
14-year-old son Cody, that he would
fight to preserve Medicaid funding
and against those who want to un-
ravel the health care safety net in
the United States.
“This, for me, is a fight for the
ages,” Wyden said. “It really is a
fight about who we are and what
are our values.”
Wyden spent much of the 90-min-
ute session leaning against the gym
stage, holding a microphone in his
left hand while gesturing with his
right hand.
He was introduced by Tribal
Council members Chris Mercier,
Tonya Gleason-Shepek and Denise
Harvey, who gifted him a Tribal
beaded necklace before the start of
the question-and-answer session.
Tribal Council member Kathleen
George also attended the Town
Hall, as did Tribal Attorney Rob
Greene and Tribal Council Chief of
Staff Stacia Hernandez.
Wyden started the Town Hall
– his 828th since being elected in
1996 – by asking that he not re-
ceive any partisan questions and
that he not be queried about recent
tweets sent out by President Don-
ald Trump.
“No subject is off-limits,” Wyden
said, “but I would just as soon not
get into presidential tweeting. The
last day or two has kind of been
over the top.”
Tribal Cultural Resources De-
partment Manager David Harrel-
son asked one of the first questions,
expressing his concern that lan-
guage being used by current Trump
administration officials in the
Department of the Interior is rem-
iniscent of rhetoric used during the
Termination era of the 1950s.
“Grassroots pressure really mat-
ters,” Wyden said, referencing an
outpouring of protest before Con-
gress’s Fourth of July break that
stalled passage of the Senate’s
“horrible” health care bill. “That is
what we are going to need as it re-
lates to these Termination policies
as well. It goes right to the heart of
the survival of the Tribes. … What
we saw this week is that political
change doesn’t start very often
in Washington, D.C., and trickle
down. It’s almost always bottom up
so that as people get involved, they
see what it really means if we were
to walk all over history and throw
out Tribal rights, rights that have
been acknowledged for decades and
decades, what a setback that would
do to the cause of freedom and liber-
ty. What people don’t realize is the
government’s word is probably as
fundamental as anything else. I’m
all in with the Tribes in this fight.”
Several attendees, including
Tribal Elder Wink Soderberg,
asked Wyden what he is doing in
the U.S. Senate to find common
ground between Republicans and
Democrats to get results.
“I made, as my kind of priori-
ty No. 1, trying to find common
ground,” Wyden said. “Trying to
find common ground built around
what I call common sense, which
is sort of the Oregon way. We try
to stand for good ideas. We’ll take
them wherever they are from. Lib-
eral. Conservative. Whatever. We’ll
just try to come up with practical
results. So much of what is going on
back there just kind of misses the
point. People on the right and the
left just throw rotten fruit at each
other and nothing gets done.
“What I try to do in every way
possible is to focus on the really big
issues – health care, taxes, trans-
portation, education – the kinds
of things that relate to how do you
make the quality of life better for
working people, seniors, typical Or-
egonians. … It requires recognizing
that there are values that both sides
feel strongly about and they can
respect the other’s point of view.”
During the Town Hall, Wyden
also discussed the Supreme Court’s
Citizens United decision, federal
funding for the Newberg-Dundee
bypass project, improving the
state’s economy, a free and open
Internet, federal aid for first-time
homebuyers and defending Oregon
voters’ decision to legalize recre-
ational and medical marijuana use.
“This is fundamentally a states’
rights question,” Wyden said about
the Justice Department possibly
cracking down on marijuana use
in states that have legalized its
use. “A lot of politicians say they
are for states’ rights. What they
really mean is that they are for
states’ rights if they think the state
is right.”
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