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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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'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.

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

until we get all the facts on the table.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.'

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

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

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

They got the right people involved to stop the activity.

It seems to me the shareholders came first.

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.

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

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.

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

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

When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.

The Internet has changed the way we communicate with each other, the way we learn about the world and the way we conduct business.

For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life-long dream of playing in the NBA.

The government's collection authority, under the Patriot Act, is basically limitless. They can get the medical records and financial records, gun purchase records. And it also becomes part of another important issue that relates to the FISA court and the rest of the debate. It almost becomes a secret law, like there are two Patriot Acts. The one you read on the laptop essentially leads you to believe that there's some connection to terror .

I think I've got the best job around.

The ethics laws do not let us tap out the truth in Morse code.

The president has the authority to end this dragnet surveillance immediately

It's correct that I wanted health reform to do more to create choices and promote competition.

You have an always-expanding, omnipresent surveillance state that's constantly chipping away at the liberties and freedoms of law-abiding Americans.

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

Fixing health care and fixing the economy are two sides of the same coin.

In order to do vigorous oversight, the leadership of the intelligence community has got to be straight with the American people and straight with the Congress. For there to be vigorous oversight, the intelligence community's got to be straight with the American people and the Congress and that has not been the case.

The combination of the growth of these digital technologies, the ability of the government to conjure up these secret interpretations, plus a very unusual and novel court make for this ever-expanding surveillance state. We so treasure our freedoms; we will regret it if our generation doesn't use this unique time to reform the surveillance laws and make it clear that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can do both.

With the loss of Free Choice Vouchers, hundreds of thousands of workers will now be forced to choose between their employers' unaffordable insurance or going without health care.

Even under the best of circumstances, the road back from war is difficult.

The KXL pipeline would make it easy and cost effective for oil producers in Canada to transport oil to the Gulf of Mexico where it could be shipped to customers - not just in the United States - but around the world.

How can it be, in a country as strong and rich as this one, that tens of thousands of Americans who need legal representation are turned away every year because their government won't support the very program designed to help them?

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.

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.

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.

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.