Oregonians know Ron as a senator who listens and innovates. For example, Ron has secured landmark health care and economic wins for our workers and retirees. Always citing the need to "throw open the doors of government for Oregonians," he holds an open-to-all town hall meeting in each of Oregon's 36 counties each year. Thus far he has held more than 970 meetings, as well as several virtual town hall meetings sponsored by the nonpartisan Town Hall Project. Wyden's dedication to hearing all sides of an issue and looking for common sense, nonpartisan solutions has won him trust on both sides of the aisle and put him at the heart of so many of the Senate's most important debates. In 2011, the Almanac of American Politics described Wyden as having "displayed a genius for coming up with sensible-sounding ideas no one else had thought of and making the counter-intuitive political alliances that prove helpful in passing bills." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote: "The country has problems. And Ron Wyden has comprehensive, bipartisan proposals for fixing them."
Senator Ron Wyden has been called a hero for net neutrality protection and internet freedom. He advocates for smart policies, including net neutrality, protecting private data, and expanding rural broadband -- that will help internet users.
Wyden introduced the first Senate net neutrality bill in 2006, and he has repeatedly been singled out for his crucial leadership to ensure real net neutrality-where all Americans can use the Internet to go where they want, when they want, and how they want, after they pay their internet access fee.
Senator Wyden wrote the laws often credited for providing the legal foundation for the Internet to be the engine for innovation, education and job creation it is today. Through smart, forward-looking policies, Wyden is a champion for technology, internet freedom and cybersecurity in the Senate.
A thriving economy depends on modern, well-functioning infrastructure. The movement of goods and people is critical to ensuring continuing prosperity, and investment in America’s transportation networks has the potential to create millions of good-paying, middle class jobs. For too long, Congress neglected to provide the necessary level of investment to ensure world class transportation infrastructure, until 2021 when Senator Wyden and his colleagues passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
This historic law will help meet current infrastructure challenges by investing in everything from repairing America's crumbling roads, bridges and ports, to expanding broadband coverage and protecting our communities from wildfires. It also supports the modernization and expansion of key assets that move goods and people around the country and make up the backbone of the American economy.
Throughout his career, Senator Wyden has been a leader in advocating for increasing direct federal investment in America’s transportation networks. As Chairman of the Finance Committee, he is a lead cosponsor of the Bridge Investment Act, which would provide a historic $75 billion investment in repairing, replacing, and upgrading the nation’s bridges. He is also a key author of the Blueprint to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure, a comprehensive package of bills that would provide $1 trillion in infrastructure funding and create more than 15 million new jobs.
In addition to fighting for more funding, Senator Wyden has long been a champion of providing state and local governments with the financing tools to leverage funding dollars and unlock additional private investment. Senator Wyden helped create the Build America Bond program during the depths of the 2008-2009 recession, which resulted in more than $180 billion in infrastructure investment over a two year period. He is also the author of the Move America Act, which would reform outdated bond rules in the tax code and could leverage more than $225 billion in private sector infrastructure investment.
Senator Wyden has made a career of seeking consensus among environmentalists and natural resource businesses, engendering a greater mutual respect for the environment. Wyden is a climate champion, working hard in the Senate to develop comprehensive solutions to tackle the climate crisis and protect our natural spaces for generations to come.
Wyden’s record has resulted in saving endangered species and Oregon’s special places. In Oregon, Wyden helped expand wilderness protections for Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge, Copper Salmon, the Oregon Badlands, Spring Basin, and the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The addition of 1,986 miles of Oregon rivers to the Wild and Scenic Rivers system means Oregon now has the most wild-and-scenic river designations in the continuous United States.
Senator Wyden has worked to protect pristine waters in southwestern Oregon from dangerous nickel mining, and to protect the livelihoods of ranchers in Eastern Oregon from hazardous uranium mining. Wyden has taken the lead in protecting old-growth forests and has advocated reform of federal government land management practices. He believes that extractive industries such as oil and coal should pay for all of the costs they impose on public lands and that American taxpayers should get a fair return on commonly held natural resources.
During his tenure, Senator Wyden has been a leader in supporting the collaborative process for land management in rural Oregon, from the collaborative sage grouse habitat conservation plans that prevented a listing of the Greater Sage Grouse to the establishment of a 10 Year Stewardship contract that saved one of the last sawmills in eastern Oregon. In 2019, after months of collaboration with local ranchers, environmental groups, local and state universities, Ron introduced legislation to provide Masher County several economic development opportunities by maintaining and improving rangeland to support local ranchers and protecting the Owyhee River Canyonlands and surrounding area for recreation and wildlife habitat.
In 2008 Senator Wyden won passage of the Combat Illegal Logging law that is having a real effect on the survival of endangered forests around the world by cutting off the market for illegal timber.
Before coming to Congress, Senator Ron Wyden was the co-director of the Oregon Gray Panthers, an advocacy organization for older Americans. While there, he worked with Oregon seniors to navigate the health care system in the early days of Medicare and Medicaid, ensure they could find justice when the unscrupulous tried to take advantage, and simply help them get through the challenges of aging in America. His work with these Oregonians fundamentally shaped his public service.
Senator Wyden has long said that if you or a loved one doesn’t have their health, everything else often falls to the wayside. That’s why making health care work better for families has always been his top priority.
As the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which is responsible for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, important parts of the individual and employer health insurance markets, and other health matters, Senator Wyden has focused on ensuring all Americans have access to affordable, loophole-free health care that gives them peace of mind.
Since becoming a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2001, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has fought for the principle that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. To achieve that principle, he has worked to increase transparency, combat over-classification and ensure accountability within the intelligence community. His oversight halted efforts to undermine the independence of the CIA inspector general and his hold on the Fiscal Year 2011 Intelligence Authorization bill led to the removal of a provision that would have damaged protections for national security whistle-blowers. He was instrumental in establishing the Public Interest Declassification Board to evaluate classification policy and decisions and in supporting the oversight work of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He also forced the declassification of the CIA Inspector General’s 9/11 Report and helped pass legislation declassifying the total size of the national intelligence budget, making it possible for the public to better understand the nation’s overall investment in intelligence programs.
Wyden’s work has long focused on ensuring that national security programs fight terrorism and other national security threats while still protecting Americans’ constitutional rights and values. He won the largest expansion of U.S. citizens’ privacy rights in 30 years when he successfully passed legislation in 2008 requiring the government to get a warrant before targeting Americans outside the U.S. for surveillance, and his amendment to the 2010 Intelligence Authorization bill increased criminal penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of a covert intelligence agent’s identity.
Wyden called for congressional investigation of torture allegations involving the CIA years before the scope of the Bush Administration’s coercive interrogation program was brought to light, and he led the successful effort to terminate the Bush Administration’s far-reaching proposed “Total Information Awareness” program. In 2008, Wyden exposed the Bush Administration’s secret interpretations of the Geneva Conventions in correspondence that ran in national news outlets, and his efforts to force the declassification of secret legal interpretations of the Patriot Act and the Executive Branch’s authority to kill Americans have brought the term “secret law” into common use.
Senator Wyden is focused on creating good-paying middle-class jobs in Oregon, boosting wages for Oregon families, and leveling the playing field for Oregon’s small businesses. Wyden uses his leadership on the Finance Committee to give a leg up to families walking an economic tightrope and develop innovative ways to grow our economy from the middle out. Whether it’s in tax or trade, Wyden has a long track record of pursuing real bipartisan solutions that put workers and families first.
In 2019 Senator Wyden introduced the ELEVATE Act to bring more Americans into the workforce by reducing barriers to employment by providing funding for public and private subsidized employment programs, which help workers access training and other supports to ensure income stability and their long-term success in the job market.
In 2022, the Senate passed Senator Wyden’s legislation to hold companies accountable for rewarding their shareholders and CEOs with stock buybacks, and instead invest in their workers.
America has a special covenant with veterans, with the men and women who wear and have worn the uniform, who put their lives on hold, who fight and, above all, who sacrifice on our behalf. Senator Wyden will never stop fighting to keep that covenant and to ensure that our veterans receive the health care and benefits they’ve earned in service. He believes is simply unacceptable for our veterans to be waiting weeks for doctors’ appointments, to face employment discrimination, or to wade through bureaucratic red tape for answers.
Throughout his time in Congress, ensuring equality and justice for Oregonians has been a major priority for Senator Wyden. Wyden has been a champion for women, children and families, LGBTQ Americans and seniors. In addition, Senator Wyden led the campaign to put domestic sex trafficking of children on the national agenda and has promoted policies to help victims of sex trafficking. Senator Wyden is also concerned about racial disparities within our criminal justice system and has invested effort into reforming the criminal justice system.
When the 2016 election spotlighted vulnerabilities in the American election system, Senator Wyden did the hard work of finding exactly how foreign hackers could attack our system, then came up with a plan to fix it: the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act.
The PAVE Act was the strongest-ever election security bill introduced, requiring every American have the option to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, with stringent post-election audits. An updated version of Senator Wyden's bill passed the House, but Mitch McConnell refused to bring it to a vote.
Over fifty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Americans are facing new barriers to exercising their fundamental right to vote. Across the country, there are stories of long lines, inexplicable purges of voter rolls and new requirements that make it harder for citizens to vote. There is no excuse for accepting this state of affairs.
Thankfully there is a solution. Oregon has been voting by mail since Senator Wyden was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, and went to all vote-by-mail in 2000. Since then Oregon has consistently had voter turnout rates that are among the highest in the country. Outdated voting systems are vulnerable to cyber-attack, foreign interference and even run-of-the-mill counting errors. That is why a paper ballot is so essential – it is an “un-hackable” backup to verify election outcomes. And as an added benefit, studies have shown it saved taxpayers money to boot.
That is why Senator Wyden introduced his plan for national vote-by-mail. The Vote by Mail Act builds on Oregon’s system and bills he introduced in 2007 and 2010. It would allow every registered voter to receive a ballot in the mail. The federal government, through the Postal Service, would assist states with the costs of mailing ballots to registered voters. States can keep their current polling practices if they wish, but those states that choose a full vote-by-mail system will see their election costs significantly drop.
Senator Wyden is taking other steps to make it easier for all Americans to vote. He worked with his colleagues to introduce the Voting Rights Advancement Act that would restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013. He also helped to introduce the Voter Empowerment Act that would modernize voter registration and increase access and accountability in our elections. Further, Senator Wyden cosponsored legislation that would end Donald Trump’s sham “election integrity” commission, the Anti-Voter Suppression Act, and he cosponsored the Democracy Restoration Act that would restore voting rights to people who did their time and were released from incarceration.
Senator Wyden has also been outspoken on the issue of campaign finance reform. Following the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decisions in Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC, he joined with many of his colleagues to introduce a constitutional amendment that would strengthen Congress’s ability to regulate campaign finance. This amendment would allow for the regulation of the raising and spending of money for federal political campaign contributions and expenditures and would help to limit the increasingly significant role well-funded special interests are playing in our political process.
In 2013, Wyden and Senator Murkowski introduced the Follow the Money Act- the first bipartisan campaign finance reform in over a decade- to increase transparency in campaign spending.
Senator Wyden is a leader on educational opportunity for all. Senator Wyden creates policies to increase high school graduation rates and expand career and technical education opportunities for Oregonians. His priorities for higher education policy include increasing college affordability and transparency, expanding the American Opportunity Tax Credit and simplifying student loans. Senator Wyden works to make sure every child in Oregon and across the country - no matter where they live or who they are - has access to high quality education.
In 1999, Senator Wyden teamed with Republican Senator Larry Craig to author the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, commonly known as the “county payments” law. The law honors the federal government’s historic commitment to rural communities where the federal government holds land, establishing a payment formula for counties that had previously received revenue-sharing payments from United States Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. Since October 2000, the program has secured more than $2.8 billion dollars for Oregon counties -- keeping teachers in classrooms, Sheriffs on the job and roads in good repair. Wyden secured a one year extension of the program in 2007 and then fought for and won a four-year reauthorization of the program in 2008. He again secured one-year extensions of the program in 2012, 2013 and 2015.
The current reauthorization expires at the end of 2015 and Wyden is currently working to extend the program for at least another year, while crafting a long-term solution for rural communities.
In 2013, the Forest Service, citing sequestration, requested that counties return $18 million in timber payments paid out at the beginning of that year. Senators Wyden, Merkley & Murkowski successfully pressed the Forest Service to halt any penalties or fines and work to minimize the impact of mandatory budget cuts on states and counties.
After decades of warring over Oregon's national forests, representatives from Oregon's timber industry and conservation groups joined U.S. Senator Ron Wyden today to introduce legislation (S.2895) that will promote active management of 8.3 million acres in six national forests east of the Cascades. The agreement would resolve decades of bitter disputes over harvest levels and watershed and old growth protection, and lead to a significant and sustainable increase in harvest in at-risk forests all across central and eastern Oregon.
At a press conference this morning, leading environmentalists and timber executives stood together with Wyden and released to the public the product of their eight months of negotiations: the "Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection and Jobs Act." Wyden introduced the bill in the Senate shortly after the news conference.
"Oregonians rightly wondered if this day would ever come, but thanks to the good faith and extraordinary perseverance of these fine men and women, timber and environmental interests are today standing side by side to move beyond decades of confrontation and improve forests and create jobs," Wyden said. "The road ahead to enacting this bill may be difficult, but when longtime adversaries demonstrate that they can sit together and find common ground, there is hope for a better tomorrow for Oregon."
"Industry and conservationists have found common ground on old-growth forest protection and scientifically sound restoration thinning projects, and now we look forward to working with Senator Wyden to turn this agreement into law," said Andy Kerr, who represented conservation groups in negotiations over the legislation.
"Senator Wyden's legislation is an important part of an overall effort to restore the health of our Eastside forests while preserving the logging and milling capacity needed to do the work on the ground," said Tom Partin, AFRC President. "Senator Wyden's personal commitment to aggressively pursue increased federal forest management funding and provide needed oversight to ensure on-the-ground mechanical treatments are accomplished in our federal forests were important factors in our participation and are essential to the viability of the legislation and rural communities east of the Cascades."
Wyden, who chairs the Senate's Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests also stressed the importance of increasing funding for the Forest Service's management activities and said he would use his subcommittee chairmanship to conduct continuous oversight of the agency's implementation of the legislation.
"There is no better way to restore our forests and jobs in some of the hardest-hit counties in our state than to increase the Forest Service budget for forest restoration," added Wyden. "It will be a top priority for me, and a frequent topic in my subcommittee."
Today's agreement is the culmination of more than a year and a half of work by Wyden with members of Oregon's timber and conservation communities who responded to his June 2008 call to come together to end the long-standing forest stalemate. Those working with Wyden include: the American Forest Resource Council and John Shelk, owner of Ochoco Lumber headquartered in Prineville, Andy Kerr, Oregon Wild, The Nature Conservancy, Pacific Rivers Council, The National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, Defenders of Wildlife, and Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center.
Wyden's legislation would require the Forest Service to identify areas of the forests that most urgently need restoration and would produce timber to support local mills, local jobs and rural infrastructure. The landscape scale projects of no less than 25,000 acres in each national forest each year would be developed over three years in collaboration with groups that include industry and conservation representatives and with an eastside scientific panel created by the legislation.
While the Forest Service is conducting this assessment of priority areas, administrative appeals -- which are often used to block proposed timber sales -- would be prohibited, and the Forest Service would be directed to treat a minimum number of acres during those three years. The first year would require at least 80,000 acres to be treated, the second year 100,000, and the final year 120,000.
Wyden's legislation also establishes protections for large trees and directs the Forest Service to develop experimental projects to protect trees above 150 years of age, (with some scientific and administrative exceptions being made for species, age and emergencies.) The results of these projects will be used to consider future protections based on age rather than size.
Other provisions in the act would permanently enact existing watershed protections on the eastside and limit permanent and temporary roads, while seeking a net reduction in roads.
As a senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Wyden has continued to push for a national energy policy that focuses on domestic production, renewability, carbon reduction and protections for energy consumers.
Senator Wyden was the first Senator to request a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) investigation of Enron, uncovering the smoking gun memos that proved their schemes to inflate West Coast energy prices. His investigations of oil company activities exposed efforts to constrain domestic supply and drive up prices for consumers. His oversight of the Minerals Management Service uncovered severe ethical lapses and led to new rules and an overhaul of the agency.
In 2006, Wyden began working to create a tax-free benefit for bicycle commuting which became law in 2008 and has continued to push for innovative policies to increase automotive fuel mileage while preserving consumer choice.
Senator Wyden has made a career of seeking consensus among environmentalists and natural resource businesses engendering a greater mutual respect for the environment. Wyden’s record has lead to impressive results in saving endangered species and Oregon’s special places. In Oregon, Wyden’s efforts have led to expanded Wilderness protections for the Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge, Copper Salmon, the Oregon Badlands, Spring Basin, the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument and the addition of hundreds of miles of Oregon rivers to the Wild and Scenic Rivers system.
Wyden has taken the lead in protecting old-growth forests. He led the opposition to the salvage rider. He has advocated reform of federal government land management practices and believes that extractive industries such as oil and coal should pay for all of the costs they impose on public lands and that the American taxpayer should see a fair return on commonly held national resources.
In 2008 Senator Wyden won passage of the Combat Illegal Logging law that is having a real effect on the survival of endangered forests around the world by cutting off the market for illegal timber.
As Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Wyden is working with the committee’s top Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to ensure taxpayers receive the full value of royalties owed for coal mined on federal lands. At their request, the Department of the Interior has launched an investigation of whether coal companies are underpaying royalties on coal that is exported to foreign markets and sold far above the low U.S. price.
In 2002, Wyden was one of only 23 Senators to vote against going to war with Iraq. Since then, he has worked to bring the troops home and provide them with quality VA services when they return. He has been an advocate for human rights throughout the globe and has recently called on the U.S. State Department to cease selling arms to the Kingdom of Bahrain until their human rights abuses end.
Senator Wyden has worked for more than 20 years to hold the Department of Energy (DOE) accountable for the cleanup of hazardous nuclear waste from Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. In 1990, he worked to pass legislation that required the DOE to identify a watch list of waste tanks that presented a risk of hydrogen explosions. In 1998, Senators Wyden and John Glenn asked the Government Accountability Office about possible groundwater contamination from leaks in these tanks. From 2006 to 2008, Senator Wyden pressed the DOE about quality control at the waste treatment plant and requested the agency investigate quality standards at Hanford. The DOE issued a report based on the results of the study. In 2013, Senator Wyden went to the Hanford complex to see what progress had been made.
As a senior member and the former chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Wyden continues to press the Department of Energy for a comprehensive plan to safely treat and manage the high-level waste tanks on the site and build a treatment plant to permanently dispose of the high-level waste contained in them. Following reports that six more tanks were leaking, Senator Wyden asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the oversight and management of the Hanford tank farm and since then a continued risk of explosion was expressed by the DNFSB.
After new reports made public last year revealed that as many as 19 additional tanks may be at higher risk of leaking radioactive material, Senator Wyden called for the DOE to consider alternatives to its current strategy, including building a new generation of tanks to more safely store nuclear waste.
Senator Wyden has also been the leading voice demanding protection for whistleblowers who raise concerns about the safety culture at Hanford. Most recently, he asked the GAO to investigate the unchecked retaliation against whistleblowers and the DOE’s lack of response to the recent firings of two former Hanford employees who reported public safety risks.
Managing the cleanup at Hanford is critical to maintaining the health of the Columbia River, which runs through the Portland-Vancouver metro area and is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest.
Since becoming a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2001, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has taken his oversight role extremely seriously. Believing that even secret programs are most effective when government is held accountable, he has worked to increase transparency and combat overclassification within the National Security Community. His oversight forestalled efforts to undermine the independence of the CIA Inspector General and his hold on the Fiscal Year 2011 Intelligence Authorization bill led to the removal of a provision that would have damaged protections for national security whistleblowers. He was instrumental in establishing the Public Interest Declassification Board to evaluate classification policy and decisions. He also forced the declassification of the CIA Inspector General’s 9/11 Report and helped pass legislation declassifying the total size of the of the national intelligence budget, making it possible for the public to better understand the nation’s overall investment in intelligence programs.
Wyden’s work has long focused on ensuring that national security programs fight terrorism ferociously while still upholding American values. He won the largest expansion of U.S. citizens’ privacy rights in 30 years when he successfully passed legislation in 2008 requiring the government to get a warrant before targeting Americans outside the U.S. for surveillance, and his amendment to the 2010 Intelligence Authorization bill increased criminal penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of a covert intelligence agent’s identity.
Wyden called for congressional investigation of torture allegations involving the CIA years before the scope of the Bush Administration’s coercive interrogation program was brought to light, and he led the successful effort to terminate the Bush Administration’s proposed “Total Information Awareness” program after he revealed plans to encourage gambling on future terrorist attacks. In 2008, Wyden exposed the Bush Administration’s secret interpretations of the Geneva Conventions in correspondence that ran on the front page of the New York Times, and his efforts to force the declassification of secret legal interpretations of the Patriot Act and the Executive Branch’s authority to kill Americans have brought the term “secret law” into common use.
Senator Wyden is focused squarely on policies that will create good-paying, middle-class jobs and boost earnings for Oregonians. For years, middle-class Americans have struggled to make progress because of flat wages and a deep economic downturn. So Ron has laid down a clear measure for any new legislation – how will it create jobs and grow paychecks?
Too many Oregonians are still waiting for the economic recovery to kick in for them and their families. When it does, the economy will truly go from a walk to a run.
Stay tuned to see what Ron’s been doing to ensure workers can get a job that will support their families, build their savings and send their children to college.
Sen. Wyden has led the fight to address the Intelligence Community’s reliance on secret interpretations of surveillance law, arguing that while “intelligence agencies need to be able to conduct operations in secret, even secret operations need to be conducted within the bounds of established, publicly understood law.”
In 2011, Wyden warned that “when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.” Revelations in 2013 revealed the National Security Agency (NSA) had been secretly interpreting the Patriot Act to collect millions of Americans’ phone and email data – without a warrant. Ron led the fight to end this warrantless mass surveillance that hurts both Americans’ civil liberties and the American economy.
Wyden has spent years pressing the Intelligence Community to disclose more information about how it interprets surveillance law, while increasingly raising concerns – in both classified and unclassified settings – that there is a significant gap between what the American people and most members of Congress believe is legal under laws like the Patriot Act and how government agencies are interpreting the law.
Since beginning his career as co-founder of Oregon’s Gray Panthers, an advocacy organization for the elderly, and director of Oregon Legal Services, Senator Wyden has never stopped fighting for America’s seniors. As a member of the House of Representatives he authored the Medigap law regulating the private market for Medicare’s supplemental insurance policies. In 1997, Wyden passed a law updating Medigap regulations to require private insurance companies offering supplemental Medicare polices to guarantee issue to all eligible individuals regardless of health status or preexisting conditions. Those laws not only protected seniors from unscrupulous insurance practices, they remain the model for consumer protection today.
In the early 1990’s working with then Representative Olympia Snowe, Wyden was among the first to propose bipartisan legislation to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and he has been the Senate’s leading proponent of empowering Medicare to use its market power to negotiate better drug prices for seniors.
During the 2009 health reform debate, Wyden successfully fought efforts to eliminate the Medicare Advantage program and instead attached an amendment to the Affordable Care Act creating a 5 star system to rate the quality of Medicare Advantage plans and reward the highest quality plans with bonus payments. In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that, thanks in part to this reform, enrollment in Medicare Advantage is up and more seniors have high quality health coverage.
Wyden’s “Independence at Home” program also passed as part of the Affordable Care Act, creating Medicare’s first home-based health program for seniors with chronic illnesses and he successfully amended Medicare rules to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries who go into hospice care do not have to give up the prospect of a cure. Wyden has received numerous award for his work on seniors issues including the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization for his hospice advocacy and his work on nursing home quality has been credited as the source of Medicare’s five-star rating system for nursing homes.
After leading the campaign to put domestic sex trafficking of children on the national agenda, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), worked with Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy to include key provisions of his legislation into the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). The TVPRA, with several of Senator Wyden’s provisions, was passed into law as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act in 2013 and represents an important step forward in putting an end to modern-day slavery.
The Wyden-authored provisions passed in VAWA created a pilot block grant program for four areas of the country hardest hit by sex trafficking. Once funded, these grants can be used to create a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to combat sex trafficking of minors. Each block grant is authorized at $1.5 to $2 million per year for up to four years.
Research suggests that the majority of trafficked youth in the United States have been in and out of the child welfare system, specifically foster care. Too often, the protections, services and protocols established for abused and neglected children within the child welfare system are not extended to trafficked children and youth, and in many states, such children aren’t even categorized as victims. Instead, they are often sent to the juvenile justice system and criminalized for being raped and trafficked.
One of the struggles in gaining attention to the issue of child sex trafficking is the lack of reliable data. Senator Wyden and Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) introduced the bipartisan Child Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act of 2013 to address this shortcoming, particularly as it relates to children in the child welfare system.
The bill would improve state and national data on the scope and prevalence of child sex trafficking and bring reforms to better identify and assist victims of child sex trafficking.
Learn more about The Child Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act of 2013
Most recently, Senator Wyden introduced The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act with U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) which supports programs that help trafficking victims by creating a deficit neutral “Domestic Trafficking Victims’ Fund.” The Fund is financed through fines on persons convicted of trafficking and other sex crimes and will increase federal resources available by up to $30 million per year.
Whether it’s blueberries or bicycles, when Oregonians make things, add value to products, and ship them around the world, Oregon’s economy and our families win.
1 in 5 Oregon jobs depends on international trade. Expanding Oregon’s exports can unlock new opportunities for middle-class Oregonians. More than 6,000 Oregon businesses export goods or services, supporting tens of thousands of working families in our state.
Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) sets the “rules of the road” for trade agreements. And the TPA introduced in 2015 represents historic advances in progressive policies worldwide.
Ron fought for - and won - historic advances in TPA, including:
Done right, trade creates new opportunities for middle class jobs and bigger paychecks for American families. That’s what Ron went to the mat for in TPA and will continue to fight for every day in Washington, D.C.
Robin Ford, Vice President at Global Cache in Jacksonville, Oregon
Knocking down barriers to trade in other countries would open significant opportunities for Global Cache, a Jacksonville, Ore., employer that manufacturers components to connect electronics to the Internet, said Vice President Robin Ford.
“Anything that can be done to pass TPA would be very helpful because we need to make it easier to import or export into other countries, which have some of the craziest duties and tariffs and barriers to entry,” Ford said. “Anything that Congress can do to lower those barriers to entry would be incredibly helpful.”
Chris King, Founder of Chris King Precision Components in Portland, Oregon
The founder of Chris King Precision Components welcomed the news of an agreement that will allow Congress to consider a Trans Pacific Partnership with the United States’ trade partners in the Pacific Rim.
“Eliminating trade barriers would be a huge boost for our export business, which makes up 40 to 45 percent of our revenues,’’ said Chris King, whose 140-employee Portland company turns aluminum, steel and titanium into bike parts. “We have no doubt that leveling the playing field in international trade would benefit our company because our high-quality bike parts are in such great demand globally.”
Mike Budd, Director of International Sales at Triad Speakers in Portland, Oregon
Mike Budd, Director of International Sales of Portland-based Triad Speakers said progress toward lowering trade obstacles in the Pacific Rim would carry significant benefits for the company and its 47 employees.
“Our employees in Oregon design and manufacture high-quality, build-to-order loudspeakers that we know the rest of the world wants to buy,” said Budd. “We look forward to growing our export business even more in the Pacific Rim countries once there are agreements in place that allow fair competition in that large and growing market.”
Doug Krahmer, Blueberry Grower in St. Paul, Oregon
"We are blessed in Oregon to grow more blueberries than we can possibly eat, and their incredible flavor, consistent quality and high nutritional value make them hot commodities around the world," said Doug Krahmer, a St. Paul, Oregon blueberry grower with 500 acres. "Reducing trade barriers in Pacific Rim markets is good for local jobs and is a fantastic opportunity to share the bounty of such a coveted Oregon crop like blueberries."
Wildfires are getting hotter and more destructive. And fires aren’t just numbers on a chart – they mean lost homes, lives and crucial forests. That’s why Senator Wyden is pushing so hard to fix the funding system, ensure more prevention funding and reduce the chances that these catastrophic fires burn through rural Oregon communities.
Senator Wyden is proud to have introduced the Lewis and Clark Mount Hood Wilderness Act of 2007, which will permanently protect nearly 125,000 acres of wilderness on Mount Hood and in the Columbia River Gorge. The bill would also grant Wild and Scenic River protections to more than 80 additional miles of rivers in Oregon. This proposal, which was recently approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, represents an increase of almost 70 percent over existing wilderness protections and a 65 percent increase to the Wild and Scenic Rivers network on Mount Hood. Proposed wilderness additions in the bill include cathedral old growth forests, historic lava beds, prime habitat for salmon and steelhead and popular recreational destinations such as Mirror Lake and Roaring River. The bill also includes protections for almost 35,000 acres of National Recreation Areas.
Senator Wyden has previously cosponsored other wilderness legislation pertaining to land both in and out of Oregon. He introduced legislation with Senator Smith to create the Soda Mountain Wilderness in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
In the 109th Congress, he was also an original cosponsor of the following legislation:
Senator Wyden continues to push for farm policy that addresses the needs of Oregon’s many specialty crop, fruit and vegetable growers. During negotiations over the most recent Farm Bill (2008), Wyden pushed provisions like the Specialty Crop Research Initiative and the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program which are together bringing nearly $700 million into the state over ten years.
The bill also included provisions authored by Senator Wyden that provided millions in mandatory funding for advanced biofuels development while ensuring that biofuels focuses on existing agricultural production and not virgin grasslands or forests.