Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio was first elected to congress in 1986 and has been re-elected eleven times by the voters of Central and Southwest Oregon. He earned his master’s degree in public administration and gerontology from the University, before beginning his lengthy political career. He is now the senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in Washington.
Art Robinson is a political newcomer running as the Republican challenging candidate, but also boasts Independent, Libertarian, and Constitution Party endorsements. Since moving to Oregon from California, where he earned a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego, Robinson has started a non-profit Institute of Science and Medicine, developed his own home-school curriculum, started a political newsletter, and gained national notoriety for creating a controversial article that asserts there is no scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
Q: What positive things can student-voters look for in your candidacy for U.S. Congressional Representative to the 4th district?
Peter DeFazio: Many years ago we had a president at the U of O named Myles Brand. He came to me when I was a new member of Congress, and he said, “Look, if we did away with these subsidized bank loans and gave everybody direct student loans, we would save so much money that we could lower interest rates and give more students financial aid,” and I said, “Great idea.” So I started years ago working on that and actually, this last year, we did that. We took away the subsidies to the banks and we’re channeling all the money directly through national direct student loans and we’re going to have lower interest rates, we’re going to have loan forgiveness programs — so if you go into a low-paying job or a public-service job you can get loan forgiveness. A bank would never do that. So we saved so much money by stopping the subsidies to the banks that we were able to put another $60 billion into Pell Grants.
Art Robinson: Well the main thing you have to look for is a rebirth and rise of the private economy to produce wealth, because you need jobs when you get out of school, and while you’re in school, you need an economy that produces the prosperity to pay for things. Of course, the University depends upon tax money, and that money is all derived from the private sector, ultimately. So the best thing is to revive the private sector, which would make it easier to go to college, and then give you a place to go when you get out. I think my ideas are more likely to revive the private sector than some of the things on the other side.
Q: Environmental issues are an important issue to a lot of Oregon voters, and I think that a lot of people my age are concerned with the overuse of natural resources and the potential for major ecological consequences in our lifetimes. Describe your environmental philosophy?
PD: I’m a strong environmentalist, and I’ve got a strong record to show it. I do believe that human-caused global warming is occurring, and my opponent does not. He says it’s a hoax to enslave the American people … That’s nuts.
AR: Firstly, that’s why I moved to Oregon. We wanted to raise our family on an Oregon farm. We can live in an environment we love, and there are many things we could do to enhance it or preserve it and so on. Most of these are costs. A farmer doesn’t necessarily go out and make the most amount of money by farming in the most environmentally proper way. Basically you have a situation where there are many things you would like to do environmentally but you have to be able to afford them … In my case, I can look out at our farm and I can say, “Gee, there are these things we could do to make it a prettier or more beautiful place and better preserved, but can I afford them?” There’s always this trade-off. If I can afford them then I live there in a different way than if I can’t afford them …
The American people have had a marked love affair with environmentalism, which is justified, but they’ve also been able to afford that love affair because of the special prosperity of their country compared to other countries. When you see real environmental destruction, you see it in poor countries. People are struggling to survive; they don’t have time for that stuff. That means we must be very careful with the things that effect our prosperity, particularly our economic system.
Q: There’s an age-old political paradigm between those who see government spending and collective debt as jeopardizing our country or our state’s future and people who see the need for state services, especially in tough economic times. Where do you see yourself on this spectrum?
PD: I am very concerned about the level of debts we’re incurring. We’re on a path to have borrowed over 100 percent, or have a debt of over 100 percent of our GDP, like Greece, within about 12 years if we don’t change course. Do we want to adopt strict budget-cutting measures in the middle of a recession, almost depression? No. But we need to have a plan and we need to put it in place. We also have to look at things we don’t need to do or we can’t afford to do.
We did balance the budget in the Clinton years … and we did it by raising tax rates on people who earned over a couple hundred thousands bucks a year and on corporations. And guess what? The Republicans said the same thing they say today, “Oh my gosh, if we raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations, the economy will collapse and jobs won’t be created.” Well in the Clinton administration, we created 33 million jobs with the tax increases. In the Bush administration, with the biggest tax cuts in history, we went to an unnecessary war in Iraq — first time we’ve ever cut taxes to go to war — he created 3 million jobs … I think it’s been pretty well-demonstrated at this point that a reasonable amount of taxation on the rich and the super-rich and the corporations is not going to be a detriment to our economy. In fact, it’ll probably enhance our economy.
AR: Well the budget has to balance, right? … You can play games with your budget for a while but it only goes so far. It is necessary that the nation’s budget is essentially balanced … We have made, Congress, the House of Representatives controls all these expenditures, so really that’s where the expenditures have been made. They control all the income too. Today, we have a $13 trillion debt, and then we have a lot of unfunded liabilities — all the things the government has promised. Those (government liabilities), how big they are, from what you read in the newspapers, it varies from $50 trillion to $125 trillion. The lowest I’ve seen is $50 trillion. Add that to the $13 trillion you got $63 trillion. Now I don’t know if anybody in this room has a feel for what a trillion dollars is — I don’t — but if you make the division, it works out to $630,000 for every American family And there are no assets in the federal government: We are the asset. We owe the money … Plus at the rate we’re going, this year the government is spending $4 trillion, taking in $2 trillion, that adds another $20,000 per family. And so you have to postulate, just to pay that debt, you have to postulate that we’ll have great prosperity and the American people will be willing to work and save beyond their own expenditures the equivalent of $630,000 after taxes to pay that debt. This is getting really out of hand.
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