Merkley visits The Dalles; focuses on jobs, health, schools

Candidate stops in The Dalles Saturday on ‘100 Town Tour’

By KATHY GRAY
of The Chronicle

Oregon Rep. Jeff Merkley swung through The Dalles on Saturday evening with a message centering on jobs, health care and technological advancement in rural areas as he campaigns for the U.S. Senate.

The Dalles was town No. 69 on Merkley’s 100 Town Tour. He dropped in at the Wasco County Democrats headquarters on Washington Street for a hotdog feed and to visit with prospective constituents.

“What I’m hearing is that people are very concerned about jobs — living wage jobs, they’re very concerned about health care,” he said. “They are very concerned about the national mismanagement of our finances, including the growing national debt, and that the issue of getting out of Iraq is important to people for a whole host of reasons.”

Merkley also cited energy policy as a major concern, as well as “integrity issues,” including policies that challenge privacy, undermining of the Geneva Conventions and issues of torture. Locally, water, transportation and broadband facilities were also important issues, he said. In an interview with The Chronicle, Merkley talked about a variety of issues.

Timber payments
Merkley supported efforts by congressional Democrats Peter DeFazio and Ron Wyden to require oil companies to pay for oil leases they currently get for free, and use that money to fund county payments.

He condemned U.S. Rep. Greg Walden for voting against that plan, accusing him of voting on behalf of the oil companies.

“They’re not selling it to us for free; they’re not selling it to the refineries for free,” Merkley said. “The idea that those contracts would actually pay as they are supposed to and the funds would be used for a series of programs in the states, that’s right on. It’s pay as you go. That’s incredibly responsible.”

Merkley also said those oil companies are holding onto many of those leases and not using them in an effort to control production and manipulate the market. He said he would convert those leases to “use-it-or-lose-it.”

Mortgage crisis
Merkley wants to end secret steering payments and prepayment penalties on a national level, as was done on the state level while he served as Speaker of the House.

“If I go to a mortgage broker, I assume the mortgage broker is working for me,” Merkley said. “It turns out they’re not. They have no fiducial responsibility to me and they can take secret payments from people to steer me into bad loans. That is incredibly stupid for us to take a major foundation of wealth-building and stability in the nation and allow what is essentially a scam.”

Prepayment penalties, he added, lock people into these bad loans.

“It’s a steel trap that closes on families. In addition, it drives up the price of houses. It’s a bad cycle. We’ve got to bust the back of that thing.”

Health care
“I believe we should have affordable health care for everyone,” Merkley said. “It’s a vision Truman set out 60 years ago.”

He said it doesn’t make sense that health care should be tied to employment, when people change jobs every three years.

In knocking on doors while campaigning, Merkley said the most common concern he’s heard is about health care: not having it, or fear of losing it.

Merkley has personal reasons for fighting for universal health care, which he supports under the Wyden plan.

“Health care almost kept me out of the race,” he said. “In order for me to run, my wife had to go to part-time and we lost her health care. I have two children and we had to transfer to my health care with the state, but I lose that at the first of the year.

“If I don’t win this race, my family loses health care. That’s a considerable risk to put my family at.”

The money to fund universal health care is already there, Merkley said.

“We’re spending 18 percent of our gross domestic product on health care,” he said. “Europe spends 10, Canada something less. We need to have a plan that fills in between existing programs, that’s an affordable, portable, comprehensive plan comparable to what members of Congress get. One that has more prevention and more disease management.”

He also said the nation needs to invest in clinics as cost-effective, front-end access points to the health care system.

“We need to take on disease management, take on prevention and end the monopoly on Medicare Part B that is forcing our seniors to pay more for medicine than anywhere in the world,” Merkley said. That’s an outrage. [Those drugs] were developed, often, with our tax-funded research.“

Rural issues
Merkley laid out a plan for rural economic development called Grow Oregon, which he says takes on core infrastructure issues such as broadband and water supply.

He pointed to his legislative efforts to allow the Umatilla water basin to better recharge its aquifers and to his leading effort to adjust transportation funding to specifically assist rural counties affected by the loss of transportation funds.

“I got a lot of flack, I can tell you, from the urban counties for that,” he said. “But I believe we need to make every corner of Oregon thrive.”

The plan also addresses key services including public safety, education, health care and a series of issues related to jobs, such as trade agreements that currently ship jobs overseas.

Merkley also wants to see increased research into cellulosic ethanol to make forest thinning pencil out financially in small timber.

“Second growth trees that are too close together are fire-prone, disease-prone; they are not good for the ecosystem and not good for timber. There’s a huge win-win here, but we have to be able to afford to do it.”

Merkley also said in Congress he would restore energy tax credits now due to sunset that have helped bring revenue to rural communities, and are geared to ending dependence on foreign oil.

Oil policy
“I am absolutely determined to end dependence on foreign oil,” Merkley said. “That leads us into bad foreign policy, bad military policy. Iraq is one example of that. It’s costing us $2 billion a day in hard currency going out the door. It’s the biggest wealth transfer in our lifetimes, money going out the door to oil sheiks. They’re turning around and using that money and buying the means of production here. We’re selling the house, mortgaging the farm right now to buy oil.”

He accused his opponent, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, of voting in lockstep with the powerful oil companies, as well as other special interests.

Iraq
Merkley accused Smith of not doing his homework on Iraq, noting that Saddam Hussein, while a “terrible, vicious dictator,” was not friendly to al Qaida and other fundamentalists.

“We lost our focus completely in terms of being in Afghanistan, and now we’ve messed up both settings.”

He called for a well-structured timeline and plan for withdrawal.

“It does not make sense to have our sons and daughters on patrol, on checkpoints,” he said. “They don’t speak the language. They don’t understand the culture. And it turns us into a hostile occupier.”

He said the new president needs to work with the Iraqi leadership and other Arab states to facilitate a plan for transition.

Core philosophy
“I believe the heart of America is to build a society where every child has the chance to live to their fullest potential and create a pathway for families to thrive,” Merkley said. “That’s why I’m so adamant about payday lenders, why I’m so adamant about credit care scams and subprime mortgage scams. That is not a pathway for families to thrive. Those are thinly veiled scams that blow up under families. And when families are fractured, we are all injured. When families succeed, we all do better.”

On the Net:
www.JeffMerkley.com

Posted August 13, 2008
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