Looking Back on a Historic Week

by Earl Blumenauer

As I try to reconstruct the events of the last week, I realize it was perhaps the most momentous of a year that is passing in a blur. Swine flu, the President's first 100 days in office, passing a budget, hate crimes legislation and credit card reform came in the midst of almost nonstop meetings on key priorities of climate change and health care reform. And then there was the Portland Streetcar! After 20 years of work and four years of stonewalling by George W. Bush's Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget, the Obama Administration figured out how to administer my Small Start legislation (passed in 2005) and get the Portland streetcar the federal dollars it needed to start construction.

Not only will this mean almost 1,300 jobs in Portland for the construction of the streetcar system, but we will be manufacturing an American-made streetcar for the first time in 58 years! This is about to put badly needed money into the Oregon economy while putting Oregonians to work. It has the added benefit of accelerating the process for streetcars from Boise to Baltimore, from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Tucson, Arizona. Many of these projects will employ Oregonians to design and build, and they will be a great market for our new American streetcar.

In Washington D.C. there were two political shock waves this last week. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party, having been driven out by the Republican national party leadership and an increasingly hostile Republican base. Just as a significant (but not as noticed) was when voters rejected Republican political tactics (and a Republican Congressional candidate) in a heavily Republican House district in the state of New York. The District, vacated by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had over 65,000 /more/ Republicans than Democrats, a huge margin in a congressional district. Part of the Democratic victory had to do with now-Representative Scott Murphy, the smart, engaging, talented young business man with the huge photogenic family and boundless energy. He is sort of a taller version of Robert Redford. But there was more: Jim Tedisco, a long-term fixture of decades of Albany politics and the leader of the Republicans in the State Assembly, lost in no small measure because, like the Republicans nationally, he couldn't figure out how to respond to the economic challenges. It took weeks for him to even announce how he would have voted on the economic recovery package (he would've voted "no").

There is an interesting situation developing for the national Republican Party. There are fewer of them, they are more hard-edged, and it is harder for us to make the bipartisan progress that was such a part of my early political career in a different era of Oregon politics with Tom McCall, Wendell Wyatt and Mark Hatfield. The combination of driving Arlen Specter out of the party and the repudiation of the Republican negativism is an interesting microcosm for the challenging political environment in which I work.

For the Republican Party, there is a complete breakdown in the legislative process as Republicans have basically taken the advice of John Boehner (R-Ohio), the minority leader in the House, who's telling his people to be communicators (talkers) instead of legislators (doers). It's not really funny, although there is a hysterical article in the April 24 issue of /Rolling Stone/ that captures in a wickedly satirical fashion the sad reality of the Republican approach. It means that it's harder to get where we need to go and it provides an unrelenting overlay of not just negative commentary but viciously misleading commentary on the economic realities we face, the opportunities and challenges of climate change, and how we are going to get the economy back on its feet as soon as possible. I find this a very troubling development for the long-term integrity of the political process.

Luckily the President is reaching out, and in the House we have such a broad and diverse Democratic caucus that we actually are far more representative of where America is than the Republicans. We have liberals, progressives, conservatives, blue dogs, new dogs, Blacks, Hispanics, and women in key leadership positions. This is the face of America. The House Democratic legislative process is not easy and it's sometimes not pretty. At the end of the day, the budget resolution is very significant because of what it is and how we got it; without a single Republican vote and no constructive Republican input.

I thank you for the interest I've been receiving back home; the e-mails, letters, conversations on the street and the participation in the wide variety of meetings I've had this last month have helped me to keep perspective. It is a tough road ahead but I am more optimistic than ever that we are headed in the right direction with the new Congress and the Obama administration.

Sincerely,

Earl