Earl F Blumenauer

By Vignesh Ramachandran (Bloomberg Government) -- He’s almost never without his signature bowtie and bicycle lapel pin — the latter a stylistic flourish that underscores Earl Blumenauer’s advocacy for his bike-friendly hometown of Portland. Blumenauer, who had a long career in state and local politics before his election to Congress in 1996, wants an alternative vision to address eclectic issues including transportation infrastructure, marijuana legalization, climate change, animal rights, health care and food policy. Transportation and scrapping punitive marijuana policies are among Blumenauer’s top priorities in the 117th Congress. An avid bicyclist who served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee since his first decade in the House, Blumenauer has pushed for funding for projects such as streetcars and bicycle lanes in Portland, Oregon’s largest city. He called Portland, with its mix of transit, parks and dense urban development, “a national laboratory for livability.” A bridge that connects two of Portland’s fastest growing neighborhoods — Lloyd and the Central Eastside — over Interstate 84 is under construction and will be named after Blumenauer. Blumenauer co-chairs the Congressional Bike Caucus with Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.). The caucus promotes safer streets, pro-bike policies and livable communities. He has written bills to create tax credits for electric bicycles, to fund local “Vision Zero” road safety initiatives, and to encourage transit- oriented development. He rode a bicycle to his first White House meeting in 1996, and cycles to work most days. “I’ve burned hundreds of thousands of calories. I’ve never had to look for a parking space. I’ve never been stuck in traffic,” he said. Even before President Joe Biden launched his effort for major federal investment in infrastructure, Blumenauer was prodding Congress to enact a long-term transportation funding plan after dozens of short-term patches. He has repeatedly advocated for legislation that would increase the federal motor fuels tax, which hasn’t been increased since 1993. Blumenauer often reminds his colleagues that Ronald Reagan in 1982 called for a gas tax increase to resurface highways and repair bridges. He once brought a life-sized cutout of the Republican president to a House floor speech advocating for more robust transportation funding. Blumenauer has advocated for an infrastructure subcommittee to be added to the Ways and Means Committee, where he’s a senior member. Marijuana legalization is a decades-long priority for Blumenauer, who represents a state where both medical and recreational cannabis are legal. As a young state legislator in the 1970s, Blumenauer voted to decriminalize the drug. Blumenauer says he’s more optimistic than ever for federal marijuana regulation changes in the 117th Congress, and he believes it can bring both parties together. Blumenauer is founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. “One of the nice things about reform of our cannabis laws is this is an area that doesn’t have to be intensely partisan,” he told MJBizDaily, a cannabis industry news site. “This is an area where voters in red states have spoken, as well as New Jersey and Oregon.” He has applauded efforts that provide legitimate cannabis businesses access to banking. Financial institutions also want to provide banking services to what’s become a “multi-billion dollar enterprise” but the federal government “has an absolutely insane policy to deny these businesses that are legal at the state level from having access to financial services,” Blumenauer said on Bloomberg Television in February 2019. Even though President Biden remains an opponent of marijuana legalization, Blumenauer believes Biden likely carried Arizona in the 2020 election because of voter turnout to support a cannabis legalization ballot measure. “The American public has signaled what they want,” Blumenauer told the Willamette Week in a Dec. 2020 interview. “The polls at the ballot box are the most compelling.” Committee & Legislative Highlights * Assuming the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee’s Trade Subcommittee in 2019, Blumenauer was key member of the working group on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that President Donald Trump signed in Jan. 2020. Oregon is a trade- dependent state, including the corporate headquarters of Nike Inc. and Columbia Sportswear Co. and the American headquarters of Adidas AG; chipmaker Intel Corp. is a big employer, too. * Blumenauer joined forced with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) to reintroduce legislation to eliminate qualified immunity that shields government officials, including police officers, from civil suits unless it can be shown they violated a clearly established constitutional right. “From Oregon to Massachusetts, we have repeatedly seen our country’s policing system, and then the justice system, fail people of color,” Blumenauer said in a statement. “Enough is enough. Systematic change is long overdue.” * In 2021, Blumenauer introduced a bill to reinstate a tax that requires polluters to pay for the cleanup of toxic and hazardous waste sites, funding what’s known as the Hazardous Substance Superfund. “By renewing the Superfund tax, the industries that had a hand in creating the problem — not taxpayers — will once again be held accountable for cleaning it up,” Blumenauer said in a statement. Blumenauer has also championed legislation to eliminate provisions in the tax code that benefit oil and gas companies. * During the COVID-19 pandemic, Blumenauer first proposed a bill to help struggling restaurants affected by coronavirus restrictions and safety. The 2021 American Rescue Plan included a $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund, but there was more demand than funding available and Blumenauer has worked with other legislators to determine how to increase funding. Politics & Personality * Blumenauer is a leading advocate of a Green New Deal to mitigate climate change, introducing the original legislation with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “Our climate is in a crisis, and we need big ideas and massive energy to create the movement that will address it,” he said in a 2019 press release unveiling the initial proposal. In 2021, Blumenauer unveiled legislation for declaring a national climate emergency with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ocasio-Cortez. * Although he represents a mostly urban district, Blumenauer has referred to the farm bill as the “most important yet underappreciated piece of federal legislation Congress regularly considers” because of its effects on “human health, nutrition, carbon reduction, economic development, land conservation, and animal welfare.” He also has worked on animal welfare legislation and changing how reauthorizations of farm programs treat farmers, ranchers, and people receiving nutrition assistance. He also has expressed optimism about development of alternatives to meat. “It wouldn’t take a lot of investment in alternative protein to take it to a whole different level. It’d be a rounding error in terms of the money going through Congress,” he said in an April 2021 interview in the New York Times. * In 2020, Blumenauer condemned the Trump administration’s use of federal force in Portland during summer protests. Blumenauer was among legislators who called on then-Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to resign. In 2020, as several Portland police officers were deputized as federal officials, Blumenauer had a bill that would have limited the authority of the U.S. Marshals Service to deputize local law enforcement officers unless consent is received from local government. The bill did not receive a vote. Road to Office Blumenauer was born and raised in Portland, where his father was a construction worker and his mother was a bank worker. As a student at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, he led a 1969 drive to lower Oregon’s voting age to 18 from 21. In 1970, he testified on the issue before a Senate subcommittee led by Sen. Birch Bayh, who was a chief architect of what became the 26th Amendment. Blumenauer was elected to the Oregon Legislature in 1972 at age 24, just two years out of college. He served in the state legislature for six years, picking up a law degree from Lewis & Clark even as he also worked at Portland State University. He was elected in 1978 as a commissioner in Multnomah County, which envelops Portland. He served for about a decade on the city council in Portland, where he was commissioner of public works and managed the city’s transportation functions, land-use planning and environmental services. He waged an unsuccessful race for Portland mayor in 1992. In January 1996, Democratic Rep. Ron Wyden was elected to the Senate in a special election, and Blumenauer easily won an election to succeed him in the Portland-based congressional district. Blumenauer has breezed to re-election in this heavily Democratic swath of Oregon. Personal Note Blumenauer is well-known for his annual holiday homemade fruitcakes, handed out to colleagues on both sides of the aisle in what he’s called “drive-by fruitcaking.” The gourmet ice cream chain Salt & Straw, based in Portland, offers a seasonal flavor based on Blumenauer’s fruitcakes. Updated June 22, 2021 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Small at asmall@bgov.com; Bennett Roth at broth@bgov.com