Dear fellow Oregonian: Monday, I finished up the last leg of a 3,800-mile swing to attend 65 meetings and public events in 17 of the 20 counties in the Second District. That’s a lot of “seat time” and we suffered two flat tires from the gravel roads of southeastern Oregon. Last night, I had the privilege of helping honor Klamath Falls businessman Rod Wendt at the Cascade Pacific Council of the Boy Scouts of America’s Meritorious Leadership Award Dinner for his leadership and support of many worthwhile causes in Oregon. More than 380 people turned out for the event in Portland which helped raise money for the Boy Scouts. In times like these, civic and charity organizations are called upon more than ever to help people in need. It was good to see such a strong show of support. Now, back to the road trip. “How long will this downturn last?” That’s the question I heard more than any other around the District. There are some signs that the credit markets may be thawing, which is an essential piece to getting banks lending to each other again and lending to those seeking credit. But we didn’t get ourselves into this problem overnight, and we certainly are not going to get out of it overnight. Hopefully, the economic stabilization package we passed in Congress will soften the blow for those on Main Street who had nothing to do with the excesses on Wall Street. Speaking of that, I have zero patience for the antics of the AIG executives who spent $440,000 on a spa and golf vacation at a luxury California beach resort on company dime…after receiving taxpayer money to keep their struggling company afloat. That behavior speaks to the very greed that got us into this mess in the first place. I joined a group of over 80 of my colleagues to ask the Treasury Department to investigate their vacation. If even a penny of taxpayer money was used, it should be paid back, with interest. Economic opportunities in rural Oregon The recent extension of the county timber payments and PILT programs is hugely important. I voted for that legislation-and thank goodness enough of us did-which gives counties a four-year lifeline. The payments decrease each year, which is why we must start now to develop plans in each county to make up for these funds when the program expires. I’ve already begun working with county leaders to identify what they’ll need to make up in the tax base to cover for the loss of county payments down the road. Then, at least we’ll have a circle around the problem and can get planning for the future. During my recent swing, I got an up-close look at some of the renewable energy projects in the Second District, which I’ve long pointed to as a source of economic development and untapped revenue for the counties. In Wasco, I attended the dedication of the Klondike III and IIIa wind farm. The wind farms in Sherman County will eventually triple its tax base. The renewable energy tax credits included in the economic stabilization plan are an important piece to the success of projects like Klondike, but unfortunately the wind extension was limited just one year. I’d like to see a ten-year extension that can give companies and investors the certainty they need to make serious commitments to wind and other renewable projects. In central Oregon, I toured a geothermal project at Newberry Crater; they’ve drilled down more than 10,000 feet, found very high temperatures-upwards of 500 degrees. Now all they need to do is find the fracture zones with the water they’ll need to produce energy. At Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, I helped “turn the dirt” at the groundbreaking for OIT’s new residence hall-the Sustainable Living Village-which will utilize power from the new geothermal well on campus. OIT will become the first college campus in the country to produce all of the energy it consumes, and more, from sources on the campus grounds. Now that’s sustainability! There’s potential in our forests, too, if only we could make some commonsense changes to federal policy. I held a renewable energy roundtable in Prineville, where Ochoco Power representatives told me about the new $40 million, 20-megawatt renewable biomass energy facility they’re hoping to launch. It would create 125 new local “green collar” jobs. One of their main obstacles is the inability to secure long-term fuel supply contracts of at least 10 to 20 years from surrounding federal lands for their biomass facility. We could fix that by building on the successful Health Forest Restoration Act to allow landscape size fuels treatment work. It’s four times cheaper to treat a forest, than to put out a fire in one. The woody biomass that comes from treatment could be used for biomass facilities, or converted into wood pellets for direct heating. We should expand the bipartisan and successful Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) to give federal forest managers the tools they need to do the thinning where the threat of catastrophic fire is most imminent. I’ve written legislation (called HFRA II) to do just that, and we would put people to work, keep the forests healthy, produce fuel for domestic energy, and reduce catastrophic fire and the 290 million metric tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere annually that comes with that fire (that’s about 4 to 6 percent of the nation’s emissions from fossil fuel burning). I made that point to the new Region Six Forester, Mary Wagner (she is in charge of all the federal forests in Oregon and Washington) at a timber roundtable I organized in Elgin. It was just her seventh day on the job, so I give her a lot of credit to come to eastern Oregon to listen to those affected most directly by federal forest policy: folks in rural communities who depend on the timber industry for a job. More than 110 people from eastern Oregon attended, and we had a good discussion about what is working and what is not working. The La Grande Observer quoted Rod Spikes, a 37-year Boise Cascade employee who serves as president of Local 2780 in Union County, about how the decline in timber production in federal forests is affecting the workers who rely on it to put bread on the table: “In 2007, it was the first time I could ever remember getting laid off. Now we’re getting laid off once a month, once a week. That’s something that should be looked at.” I agree. Federal forest policy has got to change. Hopefully, in the next Congress, the Democratic leadership will hear the concerns of working Americans like Rod, and do what they can to restore balanced management to our forests and jobs to our rural communities. When the mill closed in Prairie City recently, about 100 jobs were lost. That amounted to 36 percent of Grant County’s manufacturing base. And if an equivalent loss occurred in the Portland metro area, we were told it would equate to more than 20,000 lost jobs. So, you can understand just how devastating a mill closure is to a rural town and the people who live there. Finally, I heard lots of skepticism on the road about the latest $300 billion spending plan that Democrats may bring up as soon as the middle of November. The projects contained in the bill no doubt will sound good…money for state Medicaid and transportation projects among them, but I am deeply troubled by the record deficit spending that is going on. How much more can and should we borrow? And from whom? When will our creditors’ wallets in Asia and elsewhere dry up, and how long can we continue to afford this kind of spend now, pay sometime down the road behavior? I’m willing to have open ears about this plan (and hopefully the Democrats will be open in their process of putting the legislation together), but consider me skeptical at the moment. If there was ever a time to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, it’s now. Such limits in state constitutions have worked, including here in Oregon where politicians of both parties take pride in pointing out their success at limiting spending. Another question that came up periodically: With the fall of crude oil prices and gasoline, will Congress put the moratorium on American energy develop back into law? Unfortunately, from my perspective, I think the answer is yes. This should be the time that we invest in American jobs, producing American energy, from known American reserves and using the royalties and other payments to pay down the nation’s debt and invest in alternative every sources for our transportation sector. When oil peaked at $147 a barrel last summer, Americans were shipping $700 billion a year to other countries to supply the 60 percent of oil that we use. That represented 40 percent of our national trade deficit and one of the largest transfers of wealth from one country to another in history. When the economy turns around-and it will-if we fail to develop our own energy resources, we’ll be right back in the same high-cost-energy scenario that did such damage to family budgets, and small businesses and farms. On a closing note, I really enjoyed the time spent meeting with people all across the district and our great state. It is where I get my “to do” list and work to solve problems. When I was in Fossil earlier this week, County Judge Jeanne Burch closed the town meeting by giving me a note from a woman whose husband most likely would have died from the heart attack he suffered, expect for the fact that she could use her cell phone to call for emergency assistance. Now, that may not sound like a remarkable occurrence except for the fact that Judge Burch and I, and many others, worked for years to convince US Cellular to serve the area. Our coordinated and unrelenting efforts culminated with the community celebration of the county’s first cell tower late this summer, and with service being activated recently. It makes all the travel and work worthwhile to know that you can find solutions to real problems faced by people regardless of where they live. If you would like to unsubscribe from this mailing, simply reply and type the word “unsubscribe” in the subject box. Best regards,
Greg Walden
Member of Congress
