OR-1: Haugen applauds DeFazio for voting against bailout bill

By Britten Chase
October 4, 2008

Congressional candidate Joel Haugen (I-Scappoose) expressed disappointment in the passage of the Wall Street bailout bill Friday, but he did applaud U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Springfield) for voting against the package.

"If the old adage 'haste makes waste' holds true, we are in for the mother of all taxpayer waste," Haugen said in response to the bailout bill that allocated close to $850 billion of taxpayer dollars toward bailing out financial institutions.

Haugen campaign manager Sarah Tiedemann refused to comment when asked what the campaign thought about Rep. David Wu (D-Portland), whom Haugen is challenging, switching his vote to support the issue. Tiedemann said Haugen did not want his campaign to go negative and simply wanted to express support for DeFazio, who had worked to come up with an alternative to the plan.

"I agree wholeheartedly with the proposal made by DeFazio, who states that we should legislate a small (e.g. 1/4%) surcharge or transaction fee on all securities transactions including money market and bond transactions to pay as a loan to the respective entities for these financial bailouts,” Haugen said. “I also suggest that once profitable again, these firms should have a liability to repay these loans with proceeds dedicated to paying down our national debt."

Haugen was originally the Republican Party nominee in the 1st Congressional District. He won the primary with close to 70 percent of the vote but was on the outs with party officials after they discovered that the self-described Tom McCall Republican had endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley (D-Portland).

After Haugen and OR-1 Republican officials had several heated exchanges, Haugen was banned from local Republican Party events. After Republican banishment, Haugen took up support from the Independent Party and officially became their nominee in August. Haugen remains a registered Republican but has been very critical of Republican officials.

"Given the performance to date of the Bush administration on a whole range of issues, and the fact that the chief architect of the bailout is Secretary Henry Paulson, the recent CEO of the now failed Goldman Sachs where he resided for 24 years before becoming its chief executive, is he really the guy you want as quarterback for this crisis?" Haugen asked Friday.

Currently, there is no Republican congressional candidate on the ballot in OR-1.