U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz speaks during a ceremony at Eagle Point National Cemetery Monday. (Andy Atkinson / for the Rogue Valley Times)

Bentz voted to pass the bill despite past vows not to add to the national deficit, and representing many Oregonians who could lose access to Medicaid

 

Oregon’s lone Republican Congressman, Cliff Bentz, represents more than 705,000 Oregonians — about 16% of the state’s population — who will feel disproportionately the cuts in the Republican tax and spending bill currently being considered by the U.S. Senate and that passed the U.S. House in May.

Bentz’s 2nd Congressional District spans two-thirds of the state east of the Willamette Valley and is home to mostly rural communities with higher average rates of poverty, food insecurity, unemployment and Medicaid enrollment than the rest of the state and nation. The bill, which Bentz voted for, would cut spending on Medicaid and on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, funding meant to ensure low-income Americans have food.

In a 45-minute phone interview with the Capital Chronicle last Friday, Bentz defended the Republican tax and spending bill, adding that middle and low-income families, small businesses and the timber industry would be particularly pleased.

“I’ll just say that there’s a lot of really, really, really good things in this bill that I think people are going to be very, very happy for,” he said, pointing to the bill’s lowering or ending taxes on certain wages, such as overtime and tips, and costs, such as car loans.

He dismissed questions about the possible impacts Medicaid cuts could have on his constituents, and for rural medical clinics that cannot turn patients away regardless of insurance, saying “If I may, this is supposed to be an interview, not an interrogation or an argument.”

Instead, Bentz said, the bill reflects fiscal responsibility.

“The most important thing that I was focused on is our economy, and making sure that we don’t damage the economy, while at the same time trying to reduce the deficit,” he said.

In fact, according to analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill if implemented would add trillions to the national deficit and the national debt. That growing debt would be driven not just by spending but by extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during President Donald Trump’s first term that brought the federal corporate income tax rate and income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to historic lows. A year after the act passed — for the first time in history — America’s billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than the bottom half of American households, according to analysis by economists at the University of California at Berkeley.

Bentz said without extending the 2017 tax cuts, the average American family would see their income taxes rise by about $1,700 and up to 7 million jobs could be lost. Those figures come from the Council of Economic Advisers, a three-member, president-appointed agency within the Executive Branch that recommends economic policies.

The Capital Chronicle received nearly three dozen questions for Bentz submitted by readers. The bulk of those questions, and the interview, covered provisions of the bill that would impact access to health insurance under Medicaid, cuts to federal jobs and clean energy tax credits, tax cuts for the wealthy and the power President Donald Trump has over the Republican Party.

An annotated and full transcript of the interview can be read here.

Medicaid

To reduce federal spending, Republicans have focused on adding new work and citizenship requirements to Medicaid eligibility that could result in about 7.6 million people losing coverage over the next decade, or a bit less than 10% of everyone in the country who relies on Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would result in $76 billion to $88 billion a year not being spent on the program, according to Bentz’s analysis of Congressional Budget Office data.

The group of 7.6 million includes immigrants at risk of deportations and people who might be receiving Medicaid despite higher than reported income. But the bulk of the 7.6 million — more than 60% — are what Bentz calls the “able-bodied adults choosing not to work.” Analysis of 2024 U.S. Census Bureau surveys finds they are mostly in school, are parents, caretakers or disabled Americans.

Bentz, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee responsible for the Medicaid cuts proposed in the bill, said that he consulted closely with former Democratic Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, a doctor, for weeks on the bill, and called him “a genius” in a recent interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting.

But Kitzhaber told the Capital Chronicle that there was “nothing morally defensible in the bill” following a May 22 virtual town hall Bentz hosted the day the Republican tax and spending bill passed the House.

“We advised him on how the program works, and I warned him over and over again that the impact of this was not going to be good, especially for people in his part of the state,” Kitzhaber said.

About one in three Oregonians relies on Medicaid for their health insurance. But in the 20 counties in Bentz’s district, the numbers are even higher. In Malheur, Klamath and Josephine counties, more than 40% of residents rely on Medicaid, according to the Oregon Health Authority. In Jefferson County, half of all residents are covered by Medicaid.

Bentz said he couldn’t work all of Kitzhaber’s recommendations into the bill, including his warnings that it would be overburdensome to rural clinics to take health insurance away from people who will seek medical care they cannot pay for, anyway. Bentz said he understands why Kitzhaber would bemoan it: “Well, he’s a doctor.”

“He is going to be on the side of the patient at all times,” Bentz said. “Anything that does not provide coverage for everybody, he’s going to be concerned about it.”

Money matters

Bentz says he’s been worried about the U.S. budget deficit, or the gap between how much revenue the federal government brings in against how much it spends, since before joining Congress in 2021. Bentz has been quoted in the past saying he won’t vote for a bill that raises the deficit.

The Republican tax bill would raise the national deficit by $3.6 trillion over the next decade and would add $2.4 trillion of debt to the nation’s $35 trillion debt, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. It would also raise the debt ceiling — a legal limit to the amount of money the federal government can borrow — by $4 trillion. Asked why Bentz voted for it given his past statements, he said he had to.

“The fact of the matter is, we have to raise the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on debt incurred way before I got here, and we are not going to default,” he said.

Indeed, during Trump’s first term from January 2017 to December 2020, the growth in the U.S.’s annual deficit was the third-largest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to reporting by ProPublica and The Washington Post. Even before the COVID pandemic hit in late 2019, Trump was on track to add close to $10 trillion to the nation’s debt by 2025 — $3 trillion more than his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

Climate and energy

The version of the Republican tax bill that Bentz voted for before it got to the Senate included a provision that would have transferred and privatized 500,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah. Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, of Montana’s 1st Congressional District, ended up getting the provision killed following pressure from hunting and fishing groups in his state.

Bentz said he does not support selling off public land to the private sector, but that he does support trading it for the right purposes. He said most of the 500,000 acres slated for transfer in the bill were going to be made in a trade, not a handover. He said he was surprised Zinke caved and that he believes some of the “movie stars and whatnot who have moved up there,” to Montana, played a role in getting Zinke to axe the transfer.

“There are really good reasons many times in the West, where there are literally tens and hundreds of millions of acres of public land, to transfer a small portion of it so that we can actually grow and perhaps address, oh I don’t know, housing issues? Since everybody knows that we are desperately short of housing,” he said. “Why in the world would we try to preserve land for hunting when people are living under a tree someplace?”

Reporting in the Oregonian found Bentz’s district has about $10 billion in committed investment in solar, wind and energy projects spurred by tax incentives and investments in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Among them is Sunstone Solar, which would be Oregon’s largest approved solar and storage project on 10,000 acres of farmland in Morrow County. Many of the projects committed so far are incomplete or haven’t broken ground. Bentz, who did not vote for the bill in 2022, said he was not worried about losing those projects, and that he thought the clean energy tax credits were bad policy.

“These incentives are all tax-driven incentives, which allow folks to avoid paying taxes in return for investing in a certain type of activity in this case,” he said.

Trump’s power over Republicans

Bentz, a career lawyer before becoming a politician, said he is not concerned about Trump or his advisers’ defiance and disinterest in judicial review. He said Trump’s continued appeals to higher and higher courts when he loses in lawsuits brought against him and his policies are his legal right, and if he “bumps into a judge that he doesn’t appreciate the opinion of, he has every opportunity and right to appeal it.”

Bentz said he believes Trump is simply using the full scope of the legal system to his advantage, and that he would not support Trump defying the Supreme Court.

“I would not support anyone ignoring the Supreme Court. That’s not how our system works,” Bentz said.

As for whether Republicans will fall into line on all of Trump’s orders, Bentz said it’s not because of pressure, but because they agree with what the president stands for.

He said having power in the majority is a new experience for him after 12 years in the Oregon Legislature, led by Democrats.

“I was never one day in the majority, not even one day. And as a result, when I got here and found that I had all Republican control across the scope of the three branches of government, it’s been a huge and welcome change,” he said.

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Things Bentz will follow up on:

Bentz said he was unaware of constituent concerns about several topics but will “look into” issues.

On the well-publicized departure of the superintendent of Oregon’s only national park because of staffing concerns: “The person’s (former Crater Lake National Park Superintendent Kevin Heatley) concern may be well founded. It may not. Until I know the facts better, I’m not going to take a position on it, but now that you’ve raised an issue, we’ll look into it.”

On federal cuts to the National Weather Service office in Pendleton that ended overnight weather forecasts for Central Oregon, as reported by The Bulletin in Bend: “No one has come to me with that concern, staff or otherwise, but now that you’ve raised it, we’ll look into it.”

And in response to a question from a reader who wanted to know whether Bentz would do anything to ensure the display of a plaque made with taxpayer money to commemorate the 140 law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol and the lawmakers in it from insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021: “I think it’s safe to say that you’re the first one to raise that issue. We’ll check it out.”

A May 23 article in The Washington Post found the plaque sitting in a utility room in the Capitol basement three years after Congress approved it because the current House Republicans haven’t instructed the Architect of the Capitol to install it.