Senator Wyden: Bush agenda may resurface if labor sits out election

More than 70 union members met with U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) July 7 at a breakfast event sponsored by the Northwest Oregon Labor Council.

“It’s all about the economy — getting people back to work,” said Wyden, who is running for a third full term in the Senate.

Oregon’s senior senator said he is working on legislation that will strip tax breaks for businesses that move jobs overseas and shift the incentive to help businesses that manufacture (and create jobs) in the United States. He promoted Build America Bonds, a program he helped establish that enables municipalities to attract new investors and finance critical infrastructure projects, and he voiced optimism for an Eastside Forestry bill that he said will create jobs, save old-growth trees, and provide logs and other forestry material to local mills.

“One of the things we do best (in Oregon) is we grow things,” he said. “We ought to grow ‘em, we ought to add value to ‘em, and we ought to ship ‘em somewhere — and that means jobs for your members,” he said.

Wyden was concerned, though, that labor and Democrats “aren’t pumped” and might sit out the November election. There is no secret that union members are frustrated with the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama Administration: for not passing its top bill — the Employee Free Choice Act — when it had a 60-vote supermajority; and for its inertia on a “jobs agenda” that protects and creates work in the public and private sectors and helps the long-term unemployed get through the Great Recession.

“People are very, very frustrated,” Wyden said. “They thought more was going to get done more quickly. There are a lot of things, looking back, that should have been done differently. I don’t dispute that for a second.”

Though there is plenty of blame to go around, Wyden said there simply aren’t enough votes to move a progressive agenda quickly, noting Republican abuses in Senate procedures, including the filibuster.

“The single biggest concern I have,” Wyden said, “is that big abuses can be done in secret. It’s one thing to have the guts to stand up on the floor and to say ‘I don’t want so-and-so,’ and have a vote. It’s another thing to do it in secret.” Wyden is pursuing a bill that would bar anyone from doing public business in secret. “They ought to have to go out on the floor and identify themselves,” he said.

Wyden worried that if union members don’t vote in November, the Bush agenda will resurface.

“Are we going to have even close to the numbers that we need for progressive legislation after this election?” he asked. “One of the things this election is going to be about, is not turning back the clock.”