Contributor

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Member, Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate

Biography provided by participant

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. 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. 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 has two children, Adam and Lilly, from a previous marriage.

Recent Responses

November 2, 2009 07:52 AM

Low Cost Comes From Competition

Reformers have much more to do when it comes to making health care more affordable for Americans. Three points stand-out in my mind:

1. Writing in Time magazine (10/26), Kate Pickert points out that during the ongoing open enrollment season millions of Americans with employer based health coverage are going to find themselves paying more for less. Pickert points out that the percentage of workers with significant deductibles has more than doubled in the last three years while surveys indicate that 40% of workers will pay higher premiums next year in addition to facing increasingly higher out-of-pocket expenses. She also points out that "of companies that offered health benefits in 2009, 86% offered only one plan." Shouldn't reformers find a way to make health coverage more affordable to this hard-hit group of workers? Won't these Americans ask why health reform isn't working for them?

2. Doug Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Senate Finance Committee that under the legislation passed by that Committee less t