Posted on 12/02/2005 3:38:49 PM PST by crazyhorse691
The GOP senator from Oregon stands up to his party and says he won't vote for a bill that cuts Medicaid and food stamps.
Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith burnished his credentials this week as a leading Republican voice against dismantling the nation's health-care safety net.
Actually, he's the leading Republican voice, according to somebody who ought to know: Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a health-care consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
"Senator Smith has been extraordinarily effective and tenacious" in battling proposed steep cuts in the Medicaid and food-stamp programs, Pollack said in an interview. "He is clearly the acknowledged leader in this fight. Without question, he has become the most powerful person in Congress for determining Medicaid cuts."
That's why Pollack was in Portland on Wednesday. He wanted to stand side by side with the Oregon senator at a news conference where Smith declared he will vote against the federal budget bill if it includes the draconian Medicaid and food-stamp reductions.
And draconian is the correct adjective. Under the House budget bill, nearly 16,000 Oregon households -- the working poor, mostly -- would be chopped from the food-stamp program. The House bill would also eliminate Medicaid health coverage for nearly 25,000 low-income Oregonians, eroding the foundation of the entire Oregon Health Plan.
Now magnify all that hardship to encompass the entire nation. It's unconscionable that congressional leaders would seek to reduce the national deficit by decimating services for children, the elderly and the needy. That's true at any time, and especially right now when the whole Gulf Coast lies ravaged by storms.
Smith isn't alone in this fight. Oregon's other senator, Democrat Ron Wyden, serves with him on the Finance Committee and also is vigorously opposed to the Medicaid and food-stamp cuts. Smith, though, is the one feeling all the heat, as he's bucking the top dogs of his own party.
His harshest critics on the home front are reluctant to give him much credit. They're unhappy that he voted against opening the Arctic wilderness to oil exploration, then turned around and voted for a Senate budget bill that allows the drilling. They're not satisfied with his explanation that he felt he had to support the final bill because it included provisions preventing the deep Medicaid and food-stamp cuts. They point to his support of permanent tax cuts that benefit mainly the wealthy and call him a faux moderate Republican.
But Smith sure looked like the real thing in March when he broke ranks by sponsoring a successful amendment to delete all Medicaid cuts from next year's budget. A month later he walked out of negotiations on the subject with Republican leaders. Since then he has emerged as the leader of a loose alliance of seven GOP senators who could have the votes to decide the outcome of the looming budget battle.
Smith's task is far from over. He and his breakaway Republican allies will come under withering pressure when Congress reconvenes Dec. 12. He will have to fight hard to hold them together.
It's a worthy fight, though, and exactly the kind of leadership Oregonians hoped for when they sent Smith to Washington. Americans in every corner of the country should wish him well.
Oh, now there's an unbiased source.
SNORT.
I don't think the phrase "The GOP senator from Oregon" needs the qualifier RINO.
This paper has the kneepads on for this guy.
Cutting the rate of growth by a fraction of one percent is the Oregonians definition of draconian.
Show me a Republican who supports doing away with Medicaid. There aren't any (well, maybe Ron Paul). Even conservative legislators (both federal and state) talk about the need and vote to retain this safety-net.
Only to be disappointed time and time again. Then he goes and votes to extend the unconstitutional Clinton Ugly Gun Ban. This is just the icing on the whole stinking cake.
I will never make the same mistake. Smith has permanently lost my support. What's the point of working so damn hard just to put Wyden-Lite into office?
Ditto here. And to think that most of eastern Oregon voted 80% for him thinking they were getting a republican conservative.
Chopped? Good choice of words, idiot.
I worked for Gordon too, but I knew that he make me madder then hell sometimes.
But, he`s an Oregon Republican Senater and that`s what they do. Think of the bright side, Smith is better for us than BOW TIE EARL or DEFAZIO
And mice undermine my patio and eat up my birdseed. That's what they do.
So you're saying I should just accept them, and Smith, for what they are and just be thankfull they're not rats?
Sorry, but I'll keep trapping and killing the little bastards, and work my hardest to get Smith out of office and a real conservative in next time around.
And if Defazio or one of his ilk gets in next time around, so be it. Maybe that will finally teach some very important lessons: First, maybe the resulting disaster will finally help some of the fools in this state cotton on to who the democrats really are. Second, maybe idiot Republicans like Smith will learn that they don't stay in office when they don't act like Republicans.
There are two groups to blame for the disaster that is the Oregon economy. The democrats for acting like democrats, and the republicans for not acting like republicans.
Who's the alternative - that will actually have a half assed chance?
I'd rather him then two Wyden's or worse!
Is he trying to keep sucking revenues for social workers, psychologists and other black-art bureaucrats to break more families and cause more fatherlessness? Or is he trying to feed poor folks? The two have been obfuscated by too many in both parties for about 15 years now.
You want to fight the mice? Then go after Wyden. That`s the real Rat. Want Smith Out? Go 110% in the primary, but, come Nov.,please support the nominee.
Maybe he just needs more calcium in his diet so he can regrow a spine. Send him a carton of this stuff and see if it helps...
I have been here in Oregon for a year now. From what I have seen, Smith has some liabilities I tend to dismiss as a duplicitous reality of politics.
On the other hand, I will vote against him in the primary for one reason alone. In the general election I may just leave the space blank if he doesn't vote to confirm Alito...
We had a supposed Republican state legislator promoting the civil union perversion. He is toast on my ballot. I forget his name, it is so easy to do, but I think he is going to run for governor. I like the Republican leader of the lower house, that lady should be our senator or governor.
Kulongowski is a wierdo. Who else is running and what do you know about them?
I don't know of any ... yet. What I do know, though is your assumption, also known as the "conventional wisdom" regarding elections in Oregon is flawed.
The "conventional wisdom" would have us believe that the only way for a Republican to win an election in Oregon is for that Republican to be a pseudo-democrat. Yet I have yet to see that theory actually tested. When was the last time we had the option of voting for a bona fide conservative Republican in Oregon?
These days, elections are all about which side can get a larger percentage of their voters off their butts and into the polls. When conservatives are given the option of a really liberal democrat versus a liberal titular republican, they don't bother voting. What would be the point?
Want proof? Just look at the last gubernatorial elections. We didn't lose to the democrats, we lost to the libertarians. Why? Because the RINO candidates offered us a tax and spend economic plan for Oregon that was little different from the liberal tax and spend democrats. The Libertarians intelligently set aside some of the loopier aspects of their party platform and actually proposed a sane and fiscally conservative limited spending budget. When our elected RINOs in Salem were legislating for "greater prosperity through greater taxation", it was the libertarian party that actually pushed through the ballot initiatives to nip that tax increase in the bud.
Even worse, just look at the candidates themselves. Kulongoski is anti-Second Ammendment, but then, being a democrat, he see the entire constitution as an impediment instead of as law. Tom Cox, the Libertarian, is pro-gun by definition. The Libertarian party, despite being loopy on many issues, is very definitely pro-Second Ammendment. And Mannix, the so called "Republican Candidate", and now (sadly) the head of the Republican Party in Oregon? Away from photo ops and press conferences, he's a full on gun-grabber (who then lies about it) that the democrats would be otherwise proud of (didn't he used to be a democrat himself?). That rat bastard himself wrote HB 2535 (which failed in the senate - thank God). There's no way I, and many other conservative voters, could stomach voting for Mannix. And so the Libertarians garnered enough conservative voters who were glad to finally have a fiscally conservative candidate for a change that the RINOs lost.
Need another example? Let's look federal this time. Bush won reelection because he was a tag along ticket to the issue of gay marriage. Enough conservatives who were indifferent about Bush felt strongly enough about gay marriage to go to the polls, and while they were there, they also voted for Bush. This is a case of a truly conservative issue garnering the votes that were shared in by a slightly less liberal than the alternative candidate.
No matter who runs on the Republican ticket, the democrats will tar and feather them as a hateful baby killing racist reactionary thug (in psychologic terms, I believe that's called "projection"). Every Oregon Republican is just a puppet of Lon Mabon in their eyes. We could have Karl Marx running on the Republican ticket and the democrats would call him a greedy capitalist pig. So why not actually have a bona-fide conservative (instead of another liberal-lite-weight) run for a change?
I'd rather him then two Wyden's or worse!
Funny you should say that. Care to give me an example where Smith's vote has differed from Wyden's on any non-superficial issue?
Believe me, I will.
but, come Nov.,please support the nominee.
If that nominee is Smith again, he can go to hell.
I will never again waste a millisecond, penny, or vote on Smith.
No argument there. He's not quite in the same league as James Carville, but I sure wouldn't want him around my kids in a "read to the children" photo-op.
In the general election I may just leave the space blank if he doesn't vote to confirm Alito...
Smith is one of those weathervane Republicans who always follow the direction they think the political winds are blowing. Unfortunately, he gets his weather reports from the mainstream media. The man(?) has absolutely no spine or testicles.
He's been on shaky ground for a while, but he permanently lost my support and vote when he voted to extend the Clinton Ugly-Gun Ban.
Kulongowski is a weirdo.
Which is just another way of saying Kulongoski is a democrat.
Who else is running and what do you know about them?
With that rat bastard Mannix running the party, does it really matter?
I strongly suspect the Oregon Republican Party will once again turn my ballot into an exercise in uselessness. Eventually I'll probably have to vote with my feet and remove myself and my company from the state. Relocating would be a major cost, both in dollars and skilled employees (I don't know how many will follow their jobs), but Mannix and the Oregon Republican Party don't seem to be doing anything to prevent the democrats from making staying more expensive than leaving.
On the other hand, maybe it won't be so bad. I did just hire a new employee who left Kalifornistan because he wanted a .50 cal rifle. Maybe the democrats will do my job for me and make it easy to convince my guys to follow their jobs to another state.
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