Tonight I had the distinct honor of speaking with United States Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat, at a function for the Multnomah County (Oregon) Democratic Party. My full article on the event will be available on the blog Blue Oregon tomorrow (hopefully). For now, my brief interview with the Congressman.

Jonathan Singer: Probably the number one most important issue for the Democrats right now of course is Social Security, but obviously the Republicans don’t want a bill to come forward in the House until something happens in the Senate. What will the House Democrats be doing to at least try to initiate something or to try and block the Republicans?

Earl Blumenauer: One of the things that we’re doing is just telling the truth about what the Social Security system is, what it represents, and what’s at stake. There are people here that are not trying to fix Social Security, they want to dramatically change, eliminate – some of them would just as soon get rid of it all together.

We have had people paying higher taxes since 1983 and building up a trust fund that already has 1.7 trillion dollars so that we didn’t put people into a quandary in the next twenty or thirty years.

Part of what we’re going to be doing is helping people understand how the system works, we’re going to hold them accountable for whatever their plan is – their stealth proposal, trying to get that out on the table – and make sure that people are focusing on what we need to make sure that all Americans have the opportunity to retire with some degree of dignity and security.

Singer: The Senate (Democrats) were able to force a vote on the budget bill basically asking whether the Senate Republicans would be willing to cut benefits or increase taxes. They forced 50 Republicans to say, “yes, we’re willing to cut benefits drastically.” Is there any way that you will push a vote to get people on record, because it looks like there’s a possibility that the House may never vote on it, and people will never have to come out and give their real position.

Blumenauer: Because of the way the Republicans have shut down the procedures in the House, it is very, very difficult for the Democrats to force a vote on anything if Tom DeLay doesn’t want to. We’ll be looking for opportunities, however, to smoke them out in terms of what it is they mean. We’re looking for procedural opportunities. But most important is having this conversation with Americans. Most of the Republicans I’m watching are starting to move back from what is a pretty radical proposal.

Right now the President’s out spending 60 days trying to sell his concept around the country, and even though it’s not a hard and fast plan, we’re finding that the more people find out about it, the less they like it. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ll just be happy to have him continue talking about it because I think that’s going to help us be able to rebalance the situation in Congress.

Singer: Speaking of Tom DeLay, the Ethics panel hasn’t yet formed because Congressman Molohan blocked the new rules, essentially. What can the Democrats do to force the Republicans to get real on ethics? The Abramoff scandal, a number of the Travelgate scandals – some of which is on the Democratic side as well – but there’s so many scandals on the other side of the aisle. What can be done to get it out?

Blumenauer: Right now they are taking a pounding with the media around the country, because it’s pretty transparent that they have completely emasculated the Ethics panel, they’ve changed the rules, they’ve thrown off the independent members of the Ethics commission, and they’ve booted the Chairman, who’s a conservative Republican from Colorado. […] But this is one where the public is making a difference. That combined with Tom DeLay’s legal problems may help reverse this dynamic.

My interview with Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski will follow later this morning, so stay tuned.