Meet Ron Wyden

Ron Wyden has been standing up for Oregon in the U.S. Senate since 1996. Throughout his public service, Senator Wyden has earned a reputation as an independent voice for Oregonians and the nation, offering creative, common-sense solutions on issues that make a real difference in people's lives.

Standing Up for Health Care Reform

Since his days as co-director of the Oregon Gray Panthers, Senator Wyden has been one of the nation's leading voices on health care. He authored the first federal law to protect seniors from unscrupulous Medicare insurance scams, and during a 1994 congressional hearing, Wyden's tough questioning exposed the tobacco industry's willingness to lie about the addictiveness of their products.

In late 2006, Senator Wyden proposed the first major bipartisan health care reform legislation in more than a decade, the Healthy Americans Act (HAA), which guaranteed quality, affordable, portable health coverage for every single American. Insurance companies would no longer have been able to deny or cancel coverage due to illness or injury, and according to an independent, non-partisan analysis, the HAA would have cut health costs by more than $1.48 trillion over the next decade. Senator Wyden reintroduced the Healthy Americans Act in February of 2009. Although the bill did not become law, important elements of it were included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including Section 1332, Senator Wyden's "Waiver for State Innovation" Amendment.

Standing Up for Energy Independence

Recognizing the economic, environmental and security repercussions of America’s reliance on foreign oil, Senator Wyden has been an adamant supporter of legislation that would reduce and eliminate the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Senator Wyden supports the development of bio-fuels made from woody biomass and has introduced legislation to allow for this resource to be harvested from federal lands. He has supported increases in the CAFE standards that require better fuel economy from the nation’s fleet of automobiles. Wyden has also supported measures to enourage Americans to purchase more fuel efficient cars and trucks, along with encouraging businesses and consumers to buy and install recharging and refueling equipment for plug-in electric vehicles and cars and trucks that use alternative fuel sources.

Senator Wyden has introduced a package of energy related bills that take a market-based approach to green energy by focusing on ways to make alternative energy more competitive with fossil fuels. Senator Wyden’s proposals combine lchanges in federal motor fuel standards with alternative fuel infrastructure planning and federal tax incentives for renewable energy technology to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive system of clean, efficient energy use. These proposals do not promote one specific technology solution over another, but  allow a variety of different alternative energy technologies to compete on a level playing field in the energy marketplace.

Standing Up for National Security

A senior member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Wyden has been a consistent voice for a strong and sensible national security policy.

Convinced that it is possible to aggressively combat terrorism while still protecting American values and individual rights, Senator Wyden has led efforts to conduct vigorous oversight of America's intelligence agencies. Senator Wyden was integral in forcing the declassification of Justice Department memos allowing for extreme interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and wrote an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that protects Americans traveling overseas from being targeted for warrantless surveillance by their own government. In September 2009, Senator Wyden became an original cosponsor of the JUSTICE Act, legislation that would fix many of the PATRIOT Act’s flaws and improve protections for civil liberties and personal rights.

In 2003, he successfully led the effort to shut down the Bush Administration's Total Information Awareness program -- a data-mining activity that would have been the largest domestic spying operation on law-abiding American citizens in history. He has also worked to reduce the over-classification of information, which inhibits public accountability and makes it more difficult for intelligence agencies to share information with state and local law enforcement agencies.

After weighing all of the information, Senator Wyden was one of 23 U.S. Senators who voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2002. Since then, Senator Wyden has opposed escalating the war by sending additional combat troops to Iraq, cosponsored legislation prohibiting permanent bases in Iraq and worked to put in place benchmarks and deadlines to ensure a responsible drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Standing Up for Consumers

Senator Wyden's work as a consumer advocate began when he served on the Oregon State Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators, where he worked to ensure a safe living environment for seniors in Oregon. Since then, his consumer advocacy has expanded beyond seniors and health care into the high-tech sector, where he is now one of the most recognized leaders in the fight to keep the Internet free of discrimination, both in terms of access to content and unfair taxes.

Senator Wyden has written legislation to make credit card agreements understandable for all Americans giving them the tools to keep from being soaked by unfair credit card practices. The Credit Card Safety Star Act will grade credit card offers based on transparency, awarding ratings on a star system similar to that of crash testing in the automotive industry. Credit cards that provide clearly stated consumer friendly terms will receive a higher rating than more opaque offers designed to get consumers in trouble.

Senator Wyden also has long been a leading watchdog of the oil and gas industry, blowing the whistle on oil companies’ anti-competitive practices that drive up gas prices in Oregon and across the nation. He has taken on the industry over its underpayment of royalties owed to the taxpayers when oil and gas companies drill on public lands. Known as royalty-in-kind, this practice has been eliminated by the Obama Administration.

Standing Up for Oregon

On behalf of Oregonians, Senator Wyden has often taken on tough fights alone. For example, Senator Wyden kept the leadership of the U.S. Senate from overturning Oregon's twice-passed ballot measure legalizing physician-assisted suicide and led the fight against government intrusion in the Terri Schiavo case.

In 2000, he authored what became known as the county payments law, which has provided a stable source of revenue for rural schools and counties that were historically dependent on funds from the harvest of timber on federal lands. The law brought more than $1.6 billion to Oregon counties, and he successfully led the fight for a multi-year extension of the program in 2008.

Senator Wyden shares Oregonians' love of our natural treasures and chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. In 2000, he successfully negotiated the addition of 172,000 acres of wilderness area to what is now known as the Steens Mountain Cooperative Mountain and Protection Area.  In January 2009, he was successful in including seven pieces of legislation to the Omnibus Public Land Management Act that permanently protected many of Oregon’s natural resources including almost 127,000 acres of additional wilderness on Mount Hood and in the Columbia River Gorge.

And when Senator Wyden learned in late 2006 that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had proposed a rule that would allow Oregon and the Northwest to continue to have exceedingly high levels of benzene -- a known carcinogen in our gas -- he blocked the confirmation of a high level EPA nominee until the agency agreed to cap benzene levels at an acceptable level in Oregon and the rest of the nation.

Standing Up for Accountability

Senator Wyden has made it his mission to throw open the doors of government. Keeping a promise he made during his first U.S. Senate campaign, Senator Wyden continues to hold at least one town hall meeting in each of Oregon's 36 counties every year. Senator Wyden has held more than 609 town hall meetings to date.

Having heard from constituents about their concerns with negative campaign ads, Senator Wyden wrote the Stand by Your Ad law that requires candidates to be identified and take personal responsibility for any ad they run. And Senator Wyden has led the effort in the U.S. Senate to end the practice of secret holds whereby one Senator can anonymously block legislation from reaching the floor for a vote.

About Senator Wyden

Ron Wyden was first elected to Congress in 1980 to represent Oregon's 3rd District. In 1996, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election, becoming the first U.S. Senator to be elected in a vote-by-mail election. He was sworn in on February 5, 1996, to the seat once held by his mentor, U.S. Senator Wayne Morse. Elected to his second full term in 2004, Senator Wyden received more votes over 1.1 million than any other candidate for office in Oregon's history. He was re-elected in 2010.

Born in 1949 in Wichita, Kansas, Senator Wyden attended the University of California at Santa Barbara on a basketball scholarship. He later earned a B.A degree with distinction from Stanford University and received a J.D. degree from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1974. Following law school, he taught gerontology and co-founded the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers, an advocacy group for the elderly. He also served as the director of the Oregon Legal Services for the Elderly from 1977 to 1979 and as a member of the Oregon State Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators during that same time period.

In the U.S. Senate, Senator Wyden serves on the following committees: Finance, Intelligence, Aging, Budget, and Energy and Natural Resources. On the Energy Committee, he chairs the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. On the Finance Committee, Wyden chairs the Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness.

Senator Wyden's home is in Portland. He is married to Nancy Wyden, whom he wed in September 2005. He and Nancy welcomed the arrival of twins, William Peter and Ava Rose, in the fall of 2007. Senator Wyden also has two children, Adam and Lilly, from a previous marriage.