December 11, 2008

Meet Ron Wyden

Ron Wyden has been standing up for Oregon in the U.S. Senate since 1996.  Throughout his public service, Senator Wyden has earned a reputation as an independent voice for Oregonians and the nation, offering creative, common-sense solutions on issues that make a real difference in people’s lives.

Standing Up for Health Care Reform

Since his days as co-director of the Oregon Gray Panthers, Senator Wyden has been one of the nation’s leading voices on health care.  He authored the first federal law to protect seniors from unscrupulous Medicare insurance scams, and during a 1994 congressional hearing, Wyden’s tough questioning exposed the tobacco industry’s willingness to lie about the addictiveness of their products. 

In late 2006, Senator Wyden proposed the first major bipartisan health care reform legislation in more than a decade, the Healthy Americans Act (HAA), which guarantees quality, affordable, portable health coverage for every single American.  Insurance companies would no longer be able to deny or cancel coverage due to illness or injury, and according to an independent, non-partisan analysis, the HAA would cut health costs by more than $1.48 trillion over the next decade.

Standing Up for National Security

Senator Wyden has been a consistent voice for a strong and sensible national security policy and has served as a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2001.

After weighing all of the information, Senator Wyden was one of 23 U.S. Senators who withstood the Administration’s drumbeat to invade Iraq.  Since then, Senator Wyden has opposed escalating the war by sending additional combat troops to Iraq, cosponsored legislation prohibiting permanent bases in Iraq and worked to put in place benchmarks and deadlines to end our military occupation of Iraq. 

Convinced that it is possible to aggressively combat terrorism while still protecting American values and individual rights, Senator Wyden has worked to conduct vigorous oversight of America’s intelligence agencies.  In 2003, he successfully led the effort to shut down the Bush Administration’s Total Information Awareness program, a data-mining activity that would have been the largest domestic spying operation on law-abiding American citizens in history.  He also has worked to reduce the over-classification of information, which inhibits public accountability and makes it more difficult for intelligence agencies to share information with state and local law enforcement agencies.

Standing Up for Consumers

Senator Wyden’s work as a consumer advocate began when he served on the Oregon State Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators, where he worked to ensure a safe living environment for seniors in Oregon.  Since then, his consumer advocacy has expanded beyond seniors and health care into the high-tech sector, where he is now one of the most recognized leaders in the fight to keep the Internet free of discrimination, both in terms of access to content and unfair taxes.

Senator Wyden also has long been a leading watchdog of the oil and gas industry, blowing the whistle on oil companies’ anti-competitive practices that drive up gas prices in Oregon and across the nation.  He has also taken on the industry over its underpayment of royalties owed to the taxpayers when oil and gas companies drill on public lands.

Standing Up for Oregon

On behalf of Oregonians, Senator Wyden has often taken on tough fights alone.  For example, Senator Wyden kept the leadership of the U.S. Senate from overturning Oregon’s twice-passed ballot measure legalizing physician-assisted suicide.

In 2000, he authored what became known as the county payments law, which has provided a stable source of revenue for rural schools and counties that were historically dependent on funds from the harvest of timber on federal lands.  The law brought more than $1.6 billion to Oregon counties over the life of the bill, and he now is leading the effort to reauthorize the law for another five years.

Senator Wyden shares Oregonians’ love of our natural treasures, and has introduced legislation to permanently protect more than 128,000 acres of additional wilderness on Mount Hood and in the Columbia River Gorge.  In 2000, he successfully negotiated the addition of 172,000 acres of wilderness area to what is now known as the Steens Mountain Cooperative Mountain and Protection Area.

And when Senator Wyden learned in late 2006 that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had proposed a rule that would allow Oregon and the Northwest to continue to have exceedingly high levels of benzene – a known carcinogen – in our gas, he blocked the confirmation of a high level EPA nominee until the agency agreed to cap benzene levels at an acceptable level in Oregon as well as in the rest of the nation.

Standing Up for Accountability

Senator Wyden has made it his mission to throw open the doors of government.  Keeping a promise he made during his first U.S. Senate campaign, Senator Wyden continues to hold at least one town hall meeting in each of Oregon’s 36 counties every year.  He also holds town hall meetings with U.S. Senator Gordon Smith at the beginning of every new Congress to develop their one-of-a-kind “Bipartisan Agenda for Oregon.”

Having heard from constituents about their concerns with negative campaign ads, Senator Wyden wrote the “Stand by Your Ad” law that requires candidates to be identified and take personal responsibility for any ad they run.   And Senator Wyden has led the effort in the U.S. Senate to end the practice of “secret holds” whereby one Senator can anonymously block legislation from reaching the floor for a vote.

About Senator Wyden

Ron Wyden was first elected to Congress in 1980 to represent Oregon’s 3rd District.  In 1996, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election, becoming the first U.S. Senator to be elected in a vote-by-mail election.  He was sworn in on February 5, 1996, to the seat once held by his mentor, U.S. Senator Wayne Morse.  Elected to his second full term in 2004, Senator Wyden received more votes – over 1.1 million – than any other candidate for office in Oregon’s history. 

Born in 1949 in Wichita, Kansas, Senator Wyden attended the University of California at Santa Barbara on a basketball scholarship. He later earned a B.A degree with distinction from Stanford University and received a J.D. degree from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1974.  Following law school, he taught gerontology and co-founded the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers, an advocacy group for the elderly. He also served as the director of the Oregon Legal Services for the Elderly from 1977 to 1979 and as a member of the Oregon State Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators during that same time period.

In the U.S. Senate, Senator Wyden serves on the following committees: Finance, Intelligence, Aging, Budget and Energy and Natural Resources.  On the Energy Committee, he chairs the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.

Senator Wyden’s home is in Portland.  He is married to Nancy Wyden, whom he wed in September 2005. He and Nancy welcomed the arrival of twins, William Peter and Ava Rose, in the fall of 2007.  Senator Wyden has two children, Adam and Lilly, from a previous marriage.