Last week President Donald Trump signed what may be his signature piece of legislation, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
KLCC’s Rebecca Hansen-White spoke to Oregon’s 4th Congressional District Rep. Val Hoyle about how the bill will impact Oregon. Hoyle, a Democrat from Springfield, said the bill will reduce the state’s access to healthcare and imperil Oregon’s efforts to address climate change. Hoyle said she was also concerned about the bill’s dramatic increase in funding for immigration enforcement.
Their interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hansen-White:
One of the topics many of our listeners are concerned about is what Republicans are calling the “One big, Beautiful Bill” which the President has now signed. It's a very large piece of legislation. So, I thought we might break it up into sections. On average in your district, roughly one in three people are enrolled in Medicaid. This bill cuts Medicaid and it adds a lot of new requirements for people. How do you think this legislation is going to impact your constituents access to health care?
Hoyle:
Across the country, non-partisan evaluations have said that around 17 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage. Before the Affordable Care Act, around 21% of Lane County residents were uninsured, and a lot of those people were small business owners, were farmers, were people that didn't get insurance from their jobs. These are working people. There also are new regulations on how to qualify for Medicaid, meaning that every six months you have to reapply to check and see if you're actually eligible.
It will cost the state of Oregon $100 million to put the systems in place to comply with these new work requirement regulations. Republicans are saying this is because there's so many people that are getting Medicaid that don't deserve it. The fact of the matter is that these bureaucratic barriers that are being put up are specifically meant to make it difficult to comply, so that people that actually deserve and need to be on Medicaid, people who have dementia, people who have situations or illnesses that make it difficult to comply, they're looking for any small bureaucratic paper, missing information on a piece of paper, and they'll just throw people off Medicaid. Why? To pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires on the backs of the most vulnerable people in Oregon.
Eleven of our 33 rural hospitals are on the verge of closing, including ones in my district. When rural and frontier Oregon hospitals close, that means people don't have access to health care. Also in the bill, they struck the provision that allowed for the hospital provider tax, where hospitals pay a tax, they get matching money back, and it helps fund our rural hospitals. That got taken away - I presented an amendment to bring it back - that amendment wasn't even listened to. So, it's going to be devastating here in Oregon, because we did expand Medicaid so much. [Medicaid] allowed people to access healthcare so they can get healthcare before they have to go to the emergency room, which, you know, costs all of us more money.
Hansen-White:
When we think about hospitals potentially being at risk of closing, which will impact you, whether you're on Medicaid or not, when we think about those smaller clinics, they can't turn people away that keep people from going to the hospital, what have you heard from providers, or people who are concerned about less access to healthcare?
Hoyle:
Yes, let's go back to the Affordable Health Care Act passing, which remember at the time, was very unpopular, but now across the board, in focus groups, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, Medicaid is incredibly popular, right? Lots of working people rely on Medicaid to have basic access to care.
I remember one of the lower income clinics that opened here after the Affordable Care Act said that over 65% of the people that came in didn't have regular access to preventative care before. They had hypertension, diabetes or pre-diabetes. These are things that if you don't take care of, you end up having a stroke. You aren't able to work, you aren't able to take care of yourself.
Fundamentally, this will cost us more and in rural and frontier Oregon, if you don't have a hospital, that means you're driving two hours, three hours. Think about women that are in labor, people that are having strokes, you need to get that care right away. We will lose that care. I've spoken with the governor, I've spoken with Rep. Cliff Bentz, I've spoken my Republican colleagues. Many of them don't believe it's going to happen, and are saying, "well, this is just up to the states, we want them to pay their fair share." But the bottom line is, the federal government partners with states on Medicaid because it saves us all money in the long run. This is actually a good investment, much like SNAP. Six dollars a day is being cut - food taken away from hungry people- so that millionaires and billionaires can have tax breaks. The policy and the way it's written are cruel, and understand this was pushed through in the dark of night with no public process, with no allowances for Democrats to put in amendments, all so that they could hit a fake deadline of July 4, so Donald Trump can sign the bill.
Donald Trump didn't even know what was in the bill. The bottom line was, this was a loyalty test for Republicans to pass whatever he said needed to be done, and hopefully they'll be willing to fix it. But I'll tell you what, I am back home this week because we were supposed to be at work. We were supposed to have committee hearings. I had constituents coming out, and Republicans just canceled work this week because they got done what they needed to do, and they did not want to face the backlash and questions that Democrats have on the monstrosity that was passed.
Hansen-White:
I also wanted to talk about clean energy and Oregon's efforts to address climate change and bring clean jobs, and there's been a lot of federal legislation over the last couple of years that brought that investment here. What do you think that this bill's impact is going to be on Oregon's efforts to address climate change?
Hoyle:
It's going to be tremendous. The gas and oil companies, and the fossil fuel companies, have put a lot of money into getting a Republican majority and getting Donald Trump elected. So now, even though in our rural communities, if you look in rural and frontier Oregon, there's wind farms, there's investments in green energy - nobody can deny that climate change is real - even though I have colleagues that do. With the flooding, with the fires, with the more extreme hurricanes and storms, the fact of the matter is, it makes sense to invest in green energy.
These are jobs, many times in rural communities ... that pay prevailing and living wage with benefits and apprenticeship opportunities. Those are being cut, and so it is going to affect us a lot, but I know that in Oregon, we have prioritized green energy jobs, so we'll do what we can. But again, the federal government walking away from what is both economic sense and makes sense to ensure that we're addressing climate change as the crisis it is - it's just upside down. This is not about using taxpayer dollars wisely, rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. This is blowing up the deficit by over $5 trillion, right?
This is not economically responsible, and I think we're going to suffer in the long term. I'm just hopeful that when I go back, I know House Democrats and Senate Democrats are going to point these things out over and over and over again. Hopefully Republicans will hear from enough of their constituents and they'll find a backbone and be brave enough to stand up against these bad policies.
Hansen-White:
I know one thing that did get in a big investment in this bill was ICE. And I'm sure you've seen and heard the protests in front of the Federal Building here in Eugene. There have been people protesting ICE. There's been people who have gone to their immigration appointments and then not come back out. When you see what was in this bill, and what you've been hearing from your constituents, do you have concerns about more investment in ICE and more officers?
Hoyle:
Absolutely, there's so many egregious things about this big, ugly bill. For me, the most troubling is the increase in the funding of ICE. ICE now has a larger budget than the entire Russian military. ICE has a larger budget than every Federal law enforcement agency and the Department of Corrections combined. What we're seeing in Los Angeles, what we're seeing across the country, [is] the Trump administration is literally building internment camps like what they call Alligator Alley. It is an internment camp in the United States. There are places for women and children there. The fact is, they're saying they're going after the worst of the worst. They're showing up at churches, they're showing up at schools. They're showing up to intern and deport people. You know, they're sending people to countries they're not even from, right? That is not deportation, that is kidnapping. They're picking people up who are following the rules. They're talking about taking out naturalized citizens. This is not about protecting Americans. This is about making sure that Black and brown people in this country do not feel safe, that immigrants do not feel safe, and our country will be worse for it.
We're losing tourism because people do not want to travel to the United States. They're being stopped and deported if they criticize the President or his administration on social media. So, we're a very trade dependent and tourism dependent state, and so our economy is being devastated because of those choices. These choices are wrong, and I will continue to stand up and call out what this administration is doing, because to say that, well, we can just ignore the Constitution because, well, these people are immigrants, or they're undocumented, or they're alleged criminals. Well, without due process, you don't know who's a criminal. And when we ignore the constitution for one group of people, it's just a matter of time till we ignore the constitution for everyone. So, setting up a police state in the United States - what we saw in MacArthur Park just over the past couple days in Los Angeles - it doesn't matter what party you're in, you should stand up and say, "We are the United States of America. This is not how we operate."
This is not how the founders set up our constitution or our country to work. And I'll continue to speak out against it as well.
My concern is not enough people know what's in this bill, and not enough people are standing up and understanding what's happening with the I'd say creeping authoritarianism, but it's quick moving, authoritarian nature of this administration. Here in Eugene, people are informed. People are standing up. Over 10,000 people at the No Kings rally. It is so hopeful to see this kind of action. And it's important as community members, we stand up. But in so much of America, people aren't aware, and so that's why National Public Radio is so important. Independent news sources are so important, and it is why this administration is trying to undermine that funding.
Hansen-White:
I also wanted to talk about another area of work that you've been doing is congressional action around, the strikes against Iran. Can you tell me a little bit about that work that you're doing?
Hoyle:
I was just one of 14 original co-sponsors with Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie for the War Powers Act that would require any military intervention in Iran be authorized by Congress first. [In the past] I signed on to the War Powers Act with Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie when Biden attacked Yemen. In a bipartisan way, I believe that presidents, Democrats and Republicans, have abused the War Powers Act and that they need to come to Congress. I've been very, very clear about that, and will continue to speak up and work to find bipartisan support to move that forward and make sure that we have that authority.
Hansen-White:
With wildfire season, I know you recently have been a part of an additional congressional effort to increase the resources for wildfire response. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Hoyle:
Sure, Senator Merkley and I cosponsored a bill, his in the Senate, mine in the house, that would include $30 billion to allow the Forest Service, the [Bureau of Land Management] and other agencies, to increase wildfire reduction efforts, $3 billion for community wildfire defense grants and permanent reauthorize the programs that would help us better manage our forests.
We have forestry students at Oregon State University whose internships were just canceled. Those kids now are going to have difficulty graduating, and we're not going to have foresters with the cuts that happen with DOGE just eliminating people in critical positions within the Forest Service and the BLM, we need to hire those people back. I do have bipartisan support in that I've been working with Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy from Montana. He has wildland firefighting contracting company, so he comes out of wildland firefighting [background].
I'm working with both Democrats and Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee on a tribal co-management of federal lands bill that will allow our tribes who have millennia of experience managing forests and wildfires, to be able to help manage our public lands so we can continue to have access where I'm going to continue working with anyone possible to protect us from wildfire. But, the fundamental fact of the matter is that climate change is causing a hotter, drier conditions, less water, drought, floods, and we're going to have to deal with that. For the [Trump] administration and my Republican colleagues to pull out of the work in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that invested in green energy and technology and moving away from fossil fuels, it's a travesty, and I'm just hoping that we can figure out how to do something. So, I'll work with [anyone] to get things done, while at the same time not shirking my responsibility to call out the administration for the unconstitutional and and cruel acts that they are committing against the American people.
