Wilsonville Spokesman Online

One-on-one with Rep. Kurt Schrader

Congressman discusses issues he's tackling at the national level

• By: Patrick Johnson  
• Published: 12/10/2009 10:51:57 AM

Photo By: Ray HugheyRep. Kurt Schrader

Imagine trying to learn a new job amidst sweeping changes and landmark legislation.

That’s exactly the situation Rep. Kurt Schrader found himself in during his first 10 months as the representative from Oregon’s House District 5.

Schrader, of Canby, has been part of the process that has approved legislation regarding energy policy, healthcare and economic recovery.

The Wilsonville Spokesman's Patrick Johnson sat down with Schrader last week to ask him about policy in Washington. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
 
Wilsonville Spokesman: I would imagine that being a new congressman has a steep learning curve. How has that been going your first year in office?
 
Kurt Schrader: Yes. It’s better having been in the (Oregon) Legislature. If I hadn’t been in the Legislature, it’d be really bad. I have no idea how some of my colleagues are coping who have no legislative experience. But even still, things are done differently — I mean the layout is huge, all these subterranean tunnels you need to learn how to navigate.

You gotta figure out the new rules, their parliamentary procedures are different.

How they amend bills and such is different. Unlike the state legislature — they don’t bring a bill to committee, for instance. You don’t get a bill that comes to committee, is read, everyone gets a copy of the bill and you decide how to amend or fix or not pass the bill.

That doesn’t happen in Congress. They leak out little snippets of this and that, things they (are) thinking of doing, ideas and concepts. You never see a bill until the bill is presented, and then it’s immediately passed in that committee. You have your amendment already drawn up. It’s all done like that, and I find that a little distressful. I’d rather have a chance to mull it over and look and then amend later. It is very different than Oregon, it seems kind of weird — they are afraid almost.

For the first six, seven months I felt like I was swimming upstream. Now, I feel like I am starting to swim downstream a little bit. Does that make sense? I am a little more comfortable.
 
WS: What have been some of the challenges you have faced during your first year in office?
 
KS: I’m surprised, but I shouldn’t be — surprised that people didn’t have the same view as Oregonians. I thought we did some pretty good things in 2007 in the state legislature and could bring some of that to Washington, D.C.

I have a number of colleagues where climate change was not something they ran on, or energy independence. They don’t worry about that, they are coal states.

‘It’s just fine, you don’t need to do anything. It’s fine’— and that was a shock to me. I thought everyone realized we are at the mercy of all these OPEC nations. Time to move on, man.

And health care reform — I was shocked at some of the people and their views there. I know a lot of elements in these bills are things we have been fighting for in Oregon for years. And now they are coming true through the national agenda. I think that’s good.

So it was a challenge when I walked in there, to think, ‘Whoa, we have got a lot of educating, a lot of compromising,’ because people come at these issues from totally different perspectives — this is a big country. It’s a big, big, big country and it really was driven home to me when you get there and you see those things.

And logistically, the other thing was trying to figure out where to spend your time. Where can I be most effective — pick out some core areas? I made a conscious choice to try not to duplicate the areas that Peter DeFazio does well in, that Greg Walden does well in, Earl Blumenauer and David Wu, but try to find ways to compliment them and ways to work.

I will say this, from a policy standpoint, one of the reasons Oregon has been successful — well the NOAA fleet is an excellent example, getting the NOAA fleet to come to Oregon was because the Oregon delegation — even though it wasn’t in my colleague’s districts officially — we all worked together.
In Washington, it wasn’t like that. It was, ‘I want it in Bellingham.’ ‘No, I want it in Seattle.’ And on top of that I think the community here did a better job.

That’s an example how you learn to work together — a small state like Oregon can be effective if you work together. United we stand, divided we fail. It’s little things like that you pick up.
 
WS: In the Oregon Legislature you were called a budget hawk, Darth Schrader, because people knew you were a Democrat but also watched the budget and the facts and the figures. Some are asking, 'When did you change to support bills like the energy bill, health care and stimulus package?'
 
KS: The real answer there is I haven’t changed. There has been a lot of misinformation.

The cap and trade doesn’t cost anybody anything. It’s all fully paid for just by the fact it’s cap and trade. So the revenues to run the system come from the system itself. There are no new taxes levied. But it doesn’t add one dime to the deficit, as the president is fond of saying.

The education bill that we passed out that increased the Pell Grants is fully paid for. All we did is we took the middle man out of the whole process. We were paying people to administer this program way more than if we ran the program ourselves. So we are letting the universities do it in-house. Matter of fact, of that $80-some billion, we had $10 billion left over so we paid down the deficit. So again, it didn’t cost the taxpayer a dime. Contrary to what people will say.

The whole health care plan bill, you may not like the fact that there is going to be some new tax, or source of revenue for it, but it doesn’t add a single dime to the deficit. Half of it is paid for by savings, which is totally overlooked by the right-wing Neanderthals that like to beat us up. But it’s one of the best things that we have done in a long time in terms of getting Medicare more solid. It doesn’t cut benefits, it makes it more solid.

The only thing we did that will add to the deficit is the recovery package. As we talked about, I will defend that, OK? It helped people get through a tough time, unemployment stuff, it put money into the taxpayer’s pocket, helped the states, did some infrastructure work. I will defend that — and as you well know, two-thirds of the deficit we inherited from the previous administration and Congress. It isn’t this Congress that did that or this president.

So a lot of what they are saying is wrong.

Along with that, I am also on the budget committee and we have pushed out on the House side a new pay-go. A statutory pay-go, which means any new mandatory program has to be paid for. Also, we are doing a discretionary program — the Senate is not inclined to do that, apparently, but we are.

In fact, just last week I had a hearing that the chair let me organize to push for performance-based budgeting again. I was a big proponent of that in Oregon. I finally had a hearing on that in the budget committee and had the president’s chief performance officer in and he had a similar hearing on the Senate side.

I plan to get together with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who has similar interests as I do in the small business arena, as well as performance-based budgeting and see if we can’t start a new culture in Washington D.C. So, Kurt Schrader really hasn’t changed at all, there is a lot of gibberish out there that is frankly, uninformed. You are going to see me every bit as tough as I was when I was a state legislator.
 
WS: I have heard from the business community that the healthcare reforms that the house just passed increases the tax burden on both individuals and small business owners and does not reduce the cost of overall healthcare coverage. It doesn’t address tort reform. Why did you ultimately vote for the legislation when you said at a business forum in Wilsonville that you opposed it?
 
KS: I said I would oppose it if it didn’t reduce the cost. If it didn’t reduce the cost of a similar plan that we had during the summer recess, I’d vote against it. They did reduce the cost by almost $200 billion. They also put in a couple of things that would reduce the cost long-term in addition to what they already had in the bill. They did put in the fix that I wanted — that frankly that the whole Northwest wanted — with regard to reimbursing from Medicare. Right now, we get half the reimbursement that New York or San Francisco gets. We are not getting our fair share because doctors are paid based on the services they run, not whether or not you are getting healthy. So, in the final bill, we got an amendment put in that requires the secretary of health and human services to come up with a new system based on health, outcomes and quality, not fee for services.

That will go into effect unless both houses of Congress override it. In other words, it’s almost Congress proof. That is huge for this state, it’s huge for the nation in driving down the over-utilization for health care costs.

Apparently, I haven’t been as successful in making people aware of the good elements of this bill.

The other thing I got in the bill that I was a big, big proponent of, that helped me vote for it, is an independently appointed “board of effectiveness” research system.

What does that mean? That’s wonky — well what it means is, it’s wonky Kurt Schrader stuff. It’s about making sure that instead of worrying about this latest mammogram study, what would it be is a compilation of research about the pros and cons, the different demographics, not a one-size-fits-all study. We would have a body of research that is vetted by the different research communities that people would have faith in and that a doctor and patient could use to make good medical decisions.

And right now we don’t have that. We have all these studies and glossy advertisements on TV. People go in and say “I want that, doc,” and  frankly, I’m a veterinarian and I don’t have time to look at all the stuff. I would beg for some real peer reviewed publication that I could use. So this is in the bill.

Honestly, Patrick, the real deal is they lowered the cost for me. I got the bigger ticket items that I also think will lower costs going forward and I had a personal call from the president and I talked to my Senate colleagues and leadership and the costs will go down even further yet.

Right now, the Senate bill is about $200 billion less than the House bill — $200 to $250 billion less than that House bill and I know we are going to end up closer to the Senate bill in terms of the subsidies and that was my big issue.

Actually, I got part of what I wanted and I am going to get a bunch more of it, and we got a bunch of the good policy stuff in there that I think is going to be really, really good for costs.

The Congressional Budget Office says the deficit is going to go down. That long-term, the budget deficits are going to go down. They say the premiums are going to go down, even for the people who don’t get subsidies, compared to current law. I mean these are independently — this isn’t me giving you a bunch of Democratic talk here — this is done by the Congressional Budget Office.
 
WS: Do you support or oppose the public option in the health care? In this area we have a member of the Mad as Hell Doctors who wants to see a single payer system. What are your thoughts?
 
KS: I got that in every town hall, people way over here and way over here.

So, I come at it from the Northwest perspective. What has worked in the Northwest? We have public options right now in the Northwest, that’s why I could never understand this discussion. For me, it was never — and I think I mentioned this at every town hall — it was never envisioned from me to be a government-run program. Our role was just to set the program up, to put some seed dollars into it that this outfit would pay back, whoever it is or whatever form it takes.

We already have examples of that — Care Northwest, Kaiser, Group Health Northwest. Those are basically public options that are member-run or set up as nonprofits. The real issue from my standpoint is do you have more competition or not? What’s wrong with more competition?

I did not get any phone calls or any big meetings from the big insurance companies saying they hated the public option. They feel they can compete with these guys, so long as there are negotiated rates and that’s where we ended up. It wasn’t like they get a sweetheart deal, some low cost they have to take it at Medicare plus or minus whatever. They negotiate their rates in this public option just like the insurance companies do, they have to have the same loan reserves, cover their own administrative costs.

Contrary to what you hear on Fox News, I know your paper is much better on reporting accurately, so you will get this correct.
 
WS: During the election you were very concerned with the cap and trade energy bill that was being debated. How did that change from when you were on the campaign trial?
 
KS: It changed dramatically. A lot of people are assuming it’s the original bill the president put forward and it is not. 

The original bill the president put forward was going to be a cash cow because of all the allowances that were going to be there and you could fund the health care plan with it, you could fund this and fund that.
And it was going to be instantaneous, I mean we are going to go to renewable energy. That was it. There was nothing about the coal gasification that we now have in there — coal gasification research so the coal states can transition easier.

There was no oil drilling allowed in off-shore areas that we have now. That has changed in the new bill. The gulf states are going to be able to have more off-shore leases if that is what they want because they are oil-based states. Nuclear energy was not in the original bill — you may disagree with this — but there is now a more streamlined process and grant monies to get these nuclear plants running sooner.
There was nothing for the forests in there. We were looked upon as “we can’t touch any trees in the forests and watch them burn up.”

I played a huge role in that, worked hard with my colleagues in the upper Midwest and Brian (Baird, D-Washington) across the river here and we were able to get recognition for the first time that biomass should include dead and diseased trees that are burning up.

The final capstone to that was that there was going to be huge costs to the consumer and that’s just flat wrong. We made in the bill that the electric utilities, the natural gas utilities and the oil companies plow some of their allowances back into keeping rates down for consumers and it’s mandated in the bill. They have to do this. They have to do it to the tune where the Congressional Budget Office — again a nonpartisan outfit that scores all these things — said the average increase in utility bill for an American in 10 years from now is going to be $175 (annual increase).

That’s pretty good. To become energy independent, reinvigorate the economy and create all these new jobs and stuff and it’s only going to cost the average household $175, 10 years from now? That’s pretty good.

People forget that in 1977, the oil prices then. We were at the mercy of OPEC and we lived through it again and now that the oil prices are down we are going to let the oil companies dictate to us our energy policy. If you want independence, you better have an energy independence.

I think that is something that has got lost in this rhetoric about taxes and all that. Number one, it’s wrong. It doesn’t increase your tax bill, it increases your utility bill — yeah, but a little bit. A tiny bit. Are you willing to pay $175 to become a free country? That’s the question I would ask. Do you want to pay $175, 10 years from now to be a free country?

I will and I think most Americans are willing to do it if they understood the bill. But I am not passionate about the bill.

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