The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. One of Oregon's most famous residents, also spends a great deal of his time in Washington, DC. In fact, his frequent flyer miles from winging his way from the nation's capital to our state are in the millions. But while this super commuter, also known as Senator Ron Wyden, is very familiar to Oregon citizens with his hundreds of town halls he conducts throughout the state, something in his other residence is not familiar. Troops patrolling Washington, DC at the behest of the President, today on the show, we check in with Senator Wyden and hear what he has to say about the state of US affairs in this most unusual time, including threats to citizens and residents right here at home. Oregon, United States Senator Ron Wyden always appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
SENATOR WYDEN: Thanks for having me back.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We've talked occasionally since President Trump was sworn into office, and today's late August of 2025 give us your assessment of how things are going for the American people and the citizens of Oregon?
SENATOR WYDEN: I believe the Trump administration in the first few months has made some major mistakes, certainly the health bill in effect. This is a health bill that creates caviar for billionaires and essentially crumbs for kids, and I think that it's a distorted set of priorities in the health care bill. We're going to talk about them through the rest of the week, but a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts, in particular, in Medicaid and then tax breaks for billionaires is just completely skewed away from Oregon values, which are really built around fairness. Then I think in terms of workers and small businesses, he's really hit them very hard with his flawed tariff package. Rand Paul and I offered legislation to get rid of it. It was on a 49 to 49 vote with a tie. I think we're going to win that fight before too long.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, Senator, you've been fighting hard to protect Medicaid and Social Security. I want you to talk more about what you're doing, because those programs have been certainly talked about as being impacted severely by the quote, unquote, big, beautiful bill that passed.
SENATOR WYDEN: And the reason that Social Security has been impacted is I've led the effort to get those auditor reports, the independent auditor reports that show, in particular, that Social Security runs out of money a lot earlier because of all this money given away, you know, to billionaires. So, what I want to do starting this fall is push for a more balanced approach in terms of Social Security funding. And I think, for example, billionaires should have to pay into Social Security. I mean, right now, billionaires go to their accountants and they say, make sure I'm not taking an income this year. I can live through what's called buy, borrow and die. And so, they don't make any payments to Social Security. I think the billionaire ought to pay into Social Security. We ought to raise the wage cap so that they pay a fair share.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And if my information is correct, you've been joining with Senator Elizabeth Warren on pressing the Social Security commissioner on part of this issue about so many federal job cuts, including in the Social Security office, talk about what you're doing there.
SENATOR WYDEN: Well, I saw that just a couple of days ago. My goals, I dropped by the Eugene Social Security office on Wednesday. I saw the staff working their heads off, incredibly dedicated people trying to make sure that Oregonians get their benefits. And everybody's worried about the future of the lifeline because they're not enough workers. And so, I told everybody, the wonderful workers there, the Social Security office in Eugene. Next week I'm back in DC, I'm going to be pulling out all the stops to try to get them some more staffing help.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And then, of course, there are other agencies that I know you spend a lot of time looking at that are facing job cuts. We’re still in fire season here in the West, in Oregon, and there have been a lot of cuts to the National Forest Service and other people who help fight our fires. Talk about your concern level with regard to that?
SENATOR WYDEN: Well, I met with them in Central Oregon, and I'm really concerned that the shortage of people is hurting our effort, for example, to go in there, and particularly during the colder weather months, do prescribed burns, so that you clean out a lot of that dead and dying material. You've got to get off the forest floor, the burnable material, because if you have a lightning strike, it gets hot and dry all of a sudden, you have an inferno on your hands. And I heard about that problem in Central Oregon on the trip, and I'm already talking to experts in the field trying to figure out ways to get more resources and more help so that you can do more prevention. And the folks in Central Oregon told me that the fire season is going longer this year. Usually it stops around Labor Day, but we're going to be well through the football season before we're done fighting fire.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Let's move to the overall economy. It's interesting. A lot of economists are saying we're in this weird position with the economy, and we haven't seen the full impact on what are being called the Trump tariffs. I just wanted to get your read on your concern level about Oregonian businesses, especially small businesses, and how the tariffs are impacting them now and where they might draw even larger impacts in the near future.
SENATOR WYDEN: Certainly, what's going on in the economy is challenging. You saw some of the comments today from Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve. It looks like they're thinking about interest rate lowering because they want to make sure that the economy grows. I'm very concerned about how small businesses are getting hurt in this economy. These tariffs are taxes. They're taxes on small business people. And you know, the Trump people won't admit to that. Finally, somebody the other day walked everybody through it and said, Look, when the importer brings in the product, you basically pay the taxes at the dock. And finally, the Trump people admitted they were taxes. And I think what we've got to do is in the fall and we're going to have another chance to look at how the tax package is cut back on some of those breaks to billionaires and give more relief to working families. Yeah, even Walmart has recently given guidance that they're starting to see the impacts of tariffs, and they're going to have to pass on some of those costs to consumers. Well, it won't be very long before people start buying Christmas gifts, and I think they're going to be stunned at the sticker shock on these prices.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Now I want to move to something you talked about the day we're chatting the Fed Chair Jerome Powell made his sort of I believe it's his last address in the role. In addition to what he and the Fed needs to do, they've also had to sort of parry these attacks from President Trump and as someone who's a leader in Washington, DC, the attacks that you see from the White House on institutions like the Fed. What impact do you think that that's having, whether it's on confidence from the American people or just the ways in which the government needs to get done?
SENATOR WYDEN: It really takes a toll, because it puts people in a private economy where predictability and certainty is of such value, people throw up their hands and say, what am I going to do? I don't know what to expect. The farmers in Eastern Oregon, when I go, they tell me, look, Ron, our prices are down. That's bad. Our input costs are up. That's bad. But the biggest single thing is Trump changes his mind constantly. In international trade, he's changed his mind more than 50 times. And so, when you need predictability and some sort of certainty, it's a small business person in Central Oregon, across our state, the last thing you're getting is that, because Donald Trump will wake up on a Wednesday morning on a whim, and then all of a sudden, everything changes. How does that impact you and your caucus to be able to govern? How does it impact when, like you just pointed out, you don't know from one day to the next what the White House's policy or policy whims are going to be? Well, I have done this a while, and I sort of bake it into the expectations. For example, when Donald Trump said that with respect to Medicaid, he wasn't going to cut benefits, he was just going to cut fraud and abuse, I knew that that was in effect, as my dad said, a bunch of belonging, he was going to cut real benefits, and he did, and we planned on it. And we weren't able to stop everything. We've got more to do. We're going to be focused on the premium tax credits this fall, which are so important to working families. So, we've got a lot more to do, but I will tell you, I sort of bake it in to my judgments around these tax and regulatory issues with Donald Trump, there's going to be more to the story than what we've heard, and we've got to account for that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: A lot of news is happening on the day you and I are chatting. And in fact, it was just announced that the FBI is investigating or has raided the home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton, as many people might remember, he clashed with Donald Trump and was fired. He wrote a highly critical book. I'm not going to ask you specifics about this event, but I do want to ask you, you're a sitting United States Senator, how concerned are you about leaders such as yourself being targeted as it seems that this is happening to a former cabinet level secretary. How concerned are you, whether it's for yourself, your colleagues, or just other people in government, and what this White House seemingly is doing?
SENATOR WYDEN: I'm a big believer in the rule of law, and the rule of law, basically is that bedrock principle that the Founding Fathers had that ensured a sense of fairness and openness and transparency in government. And when I watched this morning the back and forth with what was going on in DC and Bolton and the like. And I said President saying, one minute, well, I could make a decision to get briefed today. And then he said, Well, no, I really shouldn't. To me, that's not a close call, that you do it by the book, you let the investigation go where the merits lead, and then you make judgments when you get the results. But I think to put at risk the rule of law this way the arbitrariness, I think, diminishes the freedom that has made this country so special because people want to be able to know that the government is going to recognize that arbitrary arbitrariness and just drop raw power when there's a political advantage is not the way it's going to work. It's going to be based on the rule of law.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You live part time in Washington, DC, and everybody knows that the Trump administration has sent in troops, ostensibly as what they say to obtain or re-obtain the rule of law. I wanted to get your perspective on what's happening in DC, especially because you're there a lot of the time. What is DC like?
SENATOR WYDEN: My perspective is the first thing that came out of this discussion was the people in law enforcement in DC bringing out the information showing that crime was going down. Now we're still concerned that it can be too high in certain neighborhoods, but overall, it was going down. And suddenly we were having a debate that that was not the case, that there was just lawlessness everywhere. And I think that DC, of course, has a special, you know, relationship with the federal government. But again, I think that there have been principles with respect to using, you know, law and law enforcement in a federalized kind of way when you basically are doing it in order to make a showing of power for yourself, rather than the safety of the people. And we've lived with a fear a few years ago in Portland, and it's not good to have to constantly worry about that sort of thing. It's not good for DC and a lot of people are worried in Portland about this coming to our community.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Are you concerned? Obviously, the Trump administration has not hidden their disdain for cities like Portland and also this idea of sanctuary states and cities. What's your concern level about the Trump administration turning that interest toward Portland and trying to do something similar?
SENATOR WYDEN: I'm very concerned about it. Let me just tell you what happened yesterday. You know, we had the man who's running the immigration effort, Mr. Holman, who July said, I'm coming to Portland. I'm going to get tough with those guys. They're not going to be able to get away with various things, and I invited him to one of my open to all town hall meetings, and I never heard from him. And yesterday we saw something that wasn't exactly a Profile in Courage, where he came in for a few hours, made no public statements, answered nothing from the press, and basically told us that we weren't going to have an opportunity to have them at a town hall meeting. And I just think that one of the best ways to be serious about these issues is to be open and accountable, and that's why I invited them to one of my town hall meetings. And I think again, the best government is one that's open, one that's transparent, and you get out there and show you're accountable, even when people don't agree with you, and certainly this is the case with my town meetings. I have plenty of people who have differences of opinion, and we state them in a thoughtful way, and that's the organ way.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And as we've talked many times, you're famous for holding so many town halls, and I do wonder, as you said, there are a lot of especially rural counties in Oregon that didn't vote for you and may not agree with you. How do you talk to people who maybe come up to you and say, I don't like anything that you're doing, and how can that become more of a way that we're talking to one another as citizens?
SENATOR WYDEN: It, to me, is the kind of Premier way to go about the community coming together. Because I go to these meetings where Donald Trump got 70% of the vote. I mean, that is consistently what they're getting. And I say to people, I know that a lot of you are certainly not voting for me, and I get that, but we can find things to work with. I've been talking to him, for example, about the Medicaid legislation. I mean, Sherman county Wasco, all these communities where I've been just in the last couple of weeks to get clobbered by the health care bill. And what I'm doing is saying, Look, we can find a way to work together. I don't want you to lose your hospital. I don't want you to lose your providers. And people ask me what Democrats ought to do, and I see get out there and talk to people who don't agree with you. Well, let's move to a win. Recently in Congress, you hailed the passage of the US Forest Service, secure rural schools and self-determination programs to tell our listeners what that is and what impact it's going to have. This is a program that I wrote a number of years ago with then Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, and it meant that in our state, where the federal government owns most of the land, that we would still be able to get a good check for schools and roads and law enforcement, you know, tied to the timber on federal lands. Now, most recently, the Trump administration has tried to take that money away from the counties, and I think that's a big mistake. I think the counties would be clobbered by it the amount that Oregon has gotten under my law since it was authored, is $3 billion that's with a B, and I can tell you, we hadn't had that money, we would probably have school two or three times a week in some places. And I think the failure of the House of Representatives to reauthorize the school funding that we did in the Senate passes a big mistake, and I'm working now to get the leadership in the House of Representatives, first week in September, to agree that the Forest Service and the Bureau, Bureau of Land Management, better get that money out to the counties, because they're going to be devastated. And I don't think anybody really knew what they were doing and putting that into the bill, but the House Republicans really have to step up now, and the Senate has acted. The Senate has passed it. They have to step up in the house and get this money into the rural schools, and they're going to be hurt very, very badly if those House Republicans don't do that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Just a couple more questions for you before I let you go. Looking towards the midterms, and want to get your opinion about what might happen. But also, in the context of that, what's happened in Texas with the gerrymandering moves by the Texas legislature, and then, of course, just south of us in California, an effort to sort of counter that, talk a little bit about that.
SENATOR WYDEN: To me, the best way to approach this issue is to ensure that you get the math right and you get the fairness right. And Oregon did that in our reapportionment. You know, we had one district that was a challenge, but for the most part, we came together. Certainly, people had differences. The court upheld that there is a way to do this right, and Oregon has certainly shown that in the past. Now along comes Donald Trump, who just says, I want more seats in these big states. And, you know, he wants to politicize it. I think that's the wrong way to go. But I think that those governors are doing what they have to do to particularly ensure that there's some fairness and they audit for the long, long term. Look at the Oregon model.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, I didn't want to end let you go without talking about I know you're a huge basketball fan. I did want to get your read on how progress is going on our latest professional franchise, the Portland Fire, but I also wanted you to get your opinion about the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers.
SENATOR WYDEN: Well, overall, it's looking good for the city of Portland and basketball, we've got a couple things to do. Obviously, on the NBA team, you have to go through a process. Adam Silver always told me, Ron just remember, you know, these kinds of things are contentious. There's a process of working out. We're fair to all sides that'll be coming up pretty, pretty soon. You got to got an owner who's gotten the hockey industry very successful, and he called me, and I was really encouraged about his enthusiasm for the game, and then about the WNBA. We got the Bethels. I think they're off to a strong start, and Portland's going to be great. I can just see it in the summer of 26 you'll walk down Broadway in Portland, you'd go to stop at the Sports Bra, and then you'll go to a game, you'll go to a WNBA game. You'll have a great weekend and help the Oregon economy. And also had a great, great time. I also got a chance to join Coach Lanning at Oregon football practice, ducks practice on Wednesday. That's a kick in the pants.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, he's one of the tallest US senators. If the Blazers need someone to help them out on the boards, maybe he can step in. Senator Ron Wyden, always appreciate your time. Thanks so much.
SENATOR WYDEN: We'll do it again. Take it easy, Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. It's an understatement to say that a lot has been happening with the Lane Community College Board. Tomorrow we will talk with a reporter at the Lookout Eugene/Springfield, who's been covering this dramatic situation. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
