Congressman Blumenauer works to ensure that American families are safe, healthy, and economically secure. This means, in part, ensuring an economy that works for all Oregonians while safeguarding our environment through smart investments and appropriate oversight of the economic system.  

The Ongoing Financial Crisis

Creating Jobs and Helping the Middle Class

Trade and the International Economy

The Ongoing Financial Crisis

The current credit crisis facing the United States is one of the greatest economic challenges that the country has faced. It can be squarely traced to the ideology of economic deregulation, leaving the government with few tools to address the reckless actions of many financial institutions until it was too late. Congressman Blumenauer rejects the idea that special interests reap all the rewards of their risky behavior, while the public has to clean up the mess.

Congressman Blumenauer is proud of the actions of the 110th Congress to reinvigorate the economy and put in place policies to provide greater financial institution and mortgage market oversight and accountability. He believes, however, that we must balance these efforts with others to help the hardest-hit American families, by expanding food stamps and unemployment insurance and taking an active role in stabilizing the housing market.

Creating Jobs and Helping the Middle Class

The lack of modern transportation infrastructure continues to limit our ability to compete internationally. Congressman Blumenauer is calling for a new national plan that will revitalize America’s communities, economy, and infrastructure. Not only would a major new infrastructure investment effort spur economic growth, but it would directly create hundreds of thousands of new jobs on these important public works projects.

Additionally, our competitiveness is hampered by the massive burden that health care costs impose on American businesses. For workers, the lack of a smart universal health care system makes changing jobs all the more risky. Congressman Blumenauer is fighting for a universal health care system that can contain costs and provide quality, affordable insurance choices to every American.

Congressman Blumenauer also strongly supports the rights of workers to organize and believes that a vibrant union movement is key to the continued strength of the middle class.

Trade and the International Economy

International trade can help grow the economy, but we have to do much more to make sure that all Americans benefit from trade. More than 25% of the jobs in the Portland metro area are dependent on international trade, with jobs in export manufacturing paying an average of 18% higher than non-export related jobs. However, under President Bush, trade policy has become divisive and partisan, with the concerns of working families ignored in favor of special interests. As a member of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, Congressman Blumenauer believes we need to start a new and more honest conversation about international trade and how to take advantage of its benefits to consumers and the economy as a whole, while mitigating its more harmful impacts.

Congressman Blumenauer has been leading the successful fight to create a new model for trade agreements which includes fully enforceable core labor and environmental standards. He has championed efforts to make trade work better for poor people at home and abroad and use trade rules to promote the things that Oregonians care deeply about, such as human rights and environmental sustainability.

Whatever our trade policies, however, Congressman Blumenauer recognizes that the explosion of internet and communications technologies, the doubling of the global labor force with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China and India, as well as the growth in international trade are making this a time of transition for the American economy. Skilled workers are going to be in higher demand and more Americans will be working multiple jobs over the course of their careers. Congressman Blumenauer believes that, in addition to efforts to create good jobs and help the middle class in general, we need to do much more to prepare workers for the jobs of the future through life-long learning and strengthen our programs to help people transition from job to job.