Ron Wyden Quotations

Trade wars aren't started by countries appealing to respected, independent trade authorities. Rather, trade wars begin when one country decides to violate international trade rules to undercut another country's industries.

Police departments no longer have to pay overtime or divert resources from other projects to find out where an individual goes - all they have to do is place a tracking device on someone's car or ask a cell phone company for that individual's location history and the technology does the work for them.

Since 1994, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public, though, has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed, millions went uninsured, and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.

When the Veterans Affairs Department implemented a program to provide home-based health care to veterans with multiple chronic conditions - many of the systems most expensive patients to treat - they received astounding results.

Right now, there are a limited number of customers for Canadian oil. Due to simple geography - and without the pipeline - it's really only cost effective for Canadian oil producers to sell their oil to North American customers, mostly American Midwesterners.

Protect IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are a step towards a different kind of Internet. They are a step towards an Internet in which those with money and lawyers and access to power have a greater voice than those who don't.

There is an old saying that all roads lead to Rome. It seems the administration so often clearly believes that no matter what the evidence was at any particular time, essentially everything led to Saddam Hussein.

I think if progressives stay at this, continue at the grassroots level to make the case that all Americans should have choice, all Americans ought to be able to hold insurance companies accountable, I think we will have 60 votes in the United States Senate for a strong bill.

I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high quality health care as they get older.

Pay-for-procedure or fee-for-service reimbursement rewards doctors and hospitals for volume - not keeping patients healthy or being efficiency. Pay-for-Performance is clearly one tool that can change the incentives to reward quality.

I've written and passed laws to give Medicare beneficiaries access to life saving cancer drugs and to ensure that seniors don't have to give up the prospect of a cure when they go into hospice care.

Men and women who have served in harm's way experience higher rates of divorce and suicide. Many battle the debilitating effects and stigma associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Because of the Korean free trade agreement, South Koreans who want Oregon blueberries are gonna see their prices go down because we will be getting rid of a 45 percent tariff on this Oregon product.

I don't care who you love. If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn't have to hide who you are.

As Members of Congress we can now engage with our constituents via online innovations like the Huffington Post, while a small business in rural Oregon can use the Internet to find customers around the world.

Rather than waiting for future trials to determine rules that will impact every citizen, Congress should step in and write a law that takes every American's rights into consideration.

I believe that whether you love your job or hate your job, get laid off or are just in-between jobs, you deserve health care that can never be taken away.

It is unclear exactly how many law enforcement agencies are currently using this capability, but it is reasonable to say that while resource limitations used to discourage the government from tracking you without a good reason, these constraints have largely disappeared.

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company, they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.

The Internet has become an integral part of everyday life precisely because it has been an open-to-all land of opportunity where entrepreneurs, thinkers and innovators are free to try, fail and then try again.

Oregonians aren't the only ones who recognize the extraordinary service and sacrifice of their state's National Guard.

My sense is that, when you look at what people such as former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have said over the years, you don't go with a story unless you have two independent sources to confirm it.

This house better get cleaned up in six months. The swamp is going to have to be drained pretty quickly.

In today's world, it is shortsighted to think that infectious diseases cannot cross borders. By allowing developing countries access to generic drugs, we not only help improve health in those nations, we also help ourselves control these debilitating and often deadly diseases.

Many health care providers, particularly physicians in rural and urban areas, are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.

Under the Healthy Americans Act, you're in charge of your health care - not your employer. If you lose your job, change jobs or just can't find a job, your health insurance is guaranteed to stick with you.

until we get all the facts on the table.

We're looking for the right vehicle to get this important provision into law and get some cost containment into the Medicare benefit.

The reality is that the special interest groups that have lobbied against Free Choice Vouchers object to any measure that would empower employees to have a say in their health benefits because it begins to erode their power in the current health care system.

This proposal breaks faith with rural folks all across the West and will make it harder to find bipartisan legislative solutions in the future,

We cannot abandon them, and this legislation finds a fiscally responsible way of extending this successful law.

Like any business, the oil industry runs on the basic premise of supply and demand. The more supply - the lower the price. The higher the demand - the higher price. In other words, the more people who can buy oil, the higher the price of oil.

She will face some very significant questioning, I believe, in the hearings, but she certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt.

My intention to vote for Judge Roberts tomorrow should in no way be construed as a weather vane for how I might vote on the next nominee, ... In the past I have not hesitated to vote against several of the president's nominees to the Courts of Appeal when they carried the ideological and activist baggage that I believe would be disruptive to our society.

Now, the supposed justifications for restart have completely evaporated and the funds that are being wasted will go where they have long belonged: into cleaning up the environment that adjoins our lifeblood, the Columbia River, ... After years of indecision, the people of the Pacific Northwest deserve to have the money used to clean up the contamination at Hanford rather than on some wild good chase.

now strikes a much fairer balance by protecting critical rights for our country's citizens and advancing intelligence operations to meet our security needs.

I believe very strongly that no jurisdiction in this country has shown that they have been hurt by their inability to impose discriminatory taxes against the Internet, ... State and local governments have a right to be concerned about where their revenue is coming from, but they should not be able to view the Internet as a cyber cash cow and treat it differently from other forms of commerce.

There is no assurance that even one drop of Alaskan oil will get to hurting Americans,

I think it just looks absurd for us constantly to shovel out tax breaks when executives go on television and say they aren't needed, ... They don't need tax incentives.

It is hard to miss the irony in the fact that the very same week that Republicans were publicly heralding Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to inject market forces into the American health care system, they were crafting a budget deal to strip them from the health reform law.

It is imperative that the federal government fully comply with the reporting requirements. The National Practitioner Data Bank is only as good as the information it contains.

Oregon's fishing industry is a critical part of our state's economy, and it will benefit in many ways from this Federal support approved today, ... The dollars included in this bill will also go toward improving Oregon's tsunami readiness, while also giving a boost to our state's cutting-edge oceanic research for the benefit of Oregon and the nation as a whole.

Today's modest action starts the long march to start to reform the tax breaks as they relate to the oil industry, and limits these incentives to the smaller oil companies that actually need the help the most,

We're not mandating fluffier pillows or creating a legal right to a bigger bag of peanuts, ... What we're troubled by is that unlike other retail establishments, the airline industry basically keeps you in the dark. Our bill is basically about getting good information and empowering the consumer.

Without Free Choice Vouchers, there is little in the health reform law that discourages employers from increasingly passing the burden of health care costs onto their employees.

the government isn't in the consumer protection business anymore.

This voluntary program consists mostly of stuff they're already required to do,

We have a bit more direction today than before, but . . . there is still a long way to go.

We want to give the department real teeth to protect the public. This would give the federal government meaningful authority.

There have been indications for some months now that taxpayer interests aren't protected. I'm glad the Defense Department is finally coming to ask some tough questions. They should have been raising these issues many months ago.

Everybody comes to a hearing, and they could be giving the same position paper from 10 years ago. All they need to do is change the dates, ... If you look at the tapestry of environmental legislation today . . . both sides have the capacity to block each other.

Every single day, the flood of pornographic and sleazy spam grows.

And the single hardest thing, ... is to get people beyond those points.

The testimony I have read makes it clear that additional resources are needed and needed now, ... There is neither the time, nor a need, to wait for a torturous legislative process to begin equipping fire companies now.

I voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, not because I thought it was the best we could do, but because I thought it was a whole lot better than the current system.

President Obama was right to make enforcement of those trade rules a priority and his creation, today, of a Trade Enforcement Unit is a massive step in the right direction.

President Obama said it best during his state of the Union Address this year when he declared: 'I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don't play by the rules.'

The U.S. Senate does not allow legislative provisions to be included in appropriations bills, for much the same reason that most Americans are concerned about earmarks: it creates a slippery slope by which lobbyists and special interest groups can sneak provisions into large, must-pass legislation.

The United States Senate is not here to just staple the paperwork on this deal and then salute it. We've got to go in there with an editing pencil, not a rubber stamp.

This corporation resorted to a variety of legal, regulatory and accounting contortions to keep investors and the public in the dark, ... It is now high time for the Congress to flip on the light and get to the bottom of this situation.

They got the right people involved to stop the activity.

at least puts a band-aid on a flawed policy.

It seems to me the shareholders came first.

It strikes me you're trying to have it both ways, ... I find it troubling, in terms of credibility.

It's brute power. Much of this is about who's the last in the room, and it reflects badly on the Congress.

It's time to force these objections out of the shadows and into the sunshine.

I want to get this done, ... I want a strong bill to go to the president's desk, and, based on this hearing, I think we have a lot of work to do.

They just have great cards. They've got all three branches of government. They've got the bully pulpit.

This is indeed a concern, ... We will tackle it.

I intend ? to fight with all of my strength to keep the companies from exporting problems that we have here overseas,

I'm telling you, the votes are there in the Unites States Senate, ... This is not a question of whether it is going to happen, but when it's going to happen.

If you like the health insurance that you have you should be able to keep it, but if you don't like the health insurance you have, you should be able to choose something else.

I'll tell you, gentlemen, it's this kind of case that makes many of us in Congress skeptical that it's actually a new day,

I hope events unfold as he suggests, but I'm not yet there. I heard the president, for example, say that some Sunnis were in support of this,

His answer was, 'I am concerned with judicial independence. Congress can prescribe standards, but when Congress starts to act like a court and prescribe particular remedies in particular cases, Congress has overstepped its bounds.'

If he's accurately quoted, I must say, it's outrageous, ... You all have indicated to us that you do not target children.

I asked whether it was constitutional for Congress to intervene in an end-of-life case with a specific remedy,

For Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, 267,300 reserve component service men and women were called to service.

For the amount of money that the country is going to spend this year on health care, you can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the US and pay the doctor almost $230,000 a year to cover them.

Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person's life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.

If we are going to have a health care program that works for all Americans, we are going to have to get beyond the blame game.

With a host of proposals on the table and a President examining new ideas for health reform, we have an obligation to give real reform our best shot.

When I was 27 years old, I organized legal aid clinics to help low-income seniors. It was a life-altering experience.

Let's hold insurance companies accountable the right way by making them put their whole customer base on the line.

The Bush administration did stop filling the reserve in 2002 when it helped the oil industry. Now they should do it to help the consumer.

The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque.

I think we have to ask this administration, and the President specifically, about using their political capital now to stand up for the American consumer who is getting clobbered by these gasoline and oil prices.

If China is helping its domestic industries charge an artificially low price for solar panels and other environmental goods, then China is violating international trade rules that it agreed to when it became a member of the World Trade Organization.

It is hard to see Judge Roberts as a judicial activist who would place ideological purity or a particular agenda above or ahead the need for thoughtful legal reasoning.

It took a little over a decade to build a coalition strong enough to beat the insurance companies, but in 1990, then Senator Tom Daschle and I passed a law regulating the private market for supplemental Medicare insurance policies.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today, and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.

Trade wars arent started by countries appealing to respected, independent trade authorities. Rather, trade wars begin when one country decides to violate international trade rules to undercut another countrys industries.

Congress should consult experts and consider alternatives and make 100% sure that any step it takes to police the Internet doesn't change the Internet as we know it.

You essentially have a human-relations database on millions of Americans. The administration said, "Well we're not listening to calls, we don't collect content." As [Vice President] Joe Biden said when he was a United States senator, you don't need to listen to those calls. If you have who somebody called, when and where, and you learned, for example, somebody called a psychiatrist three times in the last few days and twice after midnight, you know a lot about that person that they may not want people to know about them, especially the government.

Americans are free to choose everything from what they eat, drive and watch on TV to the President of the United States. Yet, when it comes to allowing Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family, the freedom to choose suddenly becomes un-American.

I agree with just about everyone in the reform debate when they say 'If you like what you have, you should be able to keep it.' But the truth is that none of the health reform bills making their way through Congress actually delivers on that promise.

Gasoline prices are soaring through the stratosphere, and the Federal Trade Commission, which is supposed to be standing up for the consumer, ought to stop playing footsie with the oil companies and take steps to protect the American people.

Part of what we're trying to do is lay out what really happened. For example, I've been trying to get across that the intelligence leadership did not just keep the country in the dark. They actively misled the country on key issues. When you have someone who heads the NSA saying we don't hold data at all on US citizens, that's one of the most misleading statements I believe that's ever been made about surveillance policy. And I think that now we're starting to get that message across.

Until relatively recently, law enforcement's ability to determine an individual's location and track their movements was largely limited to natural human powers of observation.

More customers for Canadian oil means that Canadian producers can charge more for their oil, which then means that American businesses and consumers will pay more for oil.