DeFazio, Feldkamp report distinct differences on issues.

Byline: The Register Guard

In Jim Feldkamp's campaign to unseat nine-term Congressman Peter DeFazio, issues have often taken a back seat to political spin. When they talk about issues, here's what they say:

Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act: This is the federal legislation that compensates counties where a large share of their property tax base is in national forest land. Under the act, Lane and Douglas counties each receive an excess of $50 million a year. Congress nearly let it expire this year, and it's set again to sunset next year.

DeFazio said his priority in the next Congress would be to make the payments permanent. "That would be devastating to law enforcement, other services and rural schools if we don't get that funded," he said.

Feldkamp has expressed the Bush administration's view that the payments have become a welfare program for counties, and it would be better for counties to wean themselves from it. His plans for replacing the money include selling some federal timber land to counties so local governments could increase revenue through logging. He said he'd also clear legal roadblocks to logging after fires on federal land, so counties could get more timber taxes.

Local economy: Feldkamp's most fleshed-out proposals for economic development are to bring cruise ships to Coos Bay to boost business for the South Coast's casinos and resorts and to station U.S. Coast Guard cutters at Coos Bay to monitor foreign fishing vessels that encroach on the U.S. exclusive economic zone - and that would force the federal government to pay for regular dredging in the harbor.

DeFazio counters that cruise ship visits and Coast Guard redeployment are unlikely. He said 47 cruise ships a year go to Alaska, and 44 of them leave from Seattle, so they wouldn't U-turn to Coos Bay. The three that come up from California are gambling ships, so they'd be unlikely to want to share their revenues with tribal casinos.

DeFazio said the Coast Guard cutters that serve the Northwest Coast from Southern Oregon to Alaska are stationed at Astoria, and that's a good halfway point.

"I've gotten dredging earmarks for the ports on the coast every year. I had to fight Reagan, Bush one, Clinton and Bush two on dredging," he said. "I'm known far and wide as the champion of dredging."

DeFazio's arguments have been convincing to at least some South Coast residents. The Coos Bay World newspaper endorsed him last week.

War: Feldkamp said it doesn't matter so much how we got to Iraq, "we're there," he said. "A lot of people are blaming Bush for Iraq and the war on terror. That's all behind us. I do not believe that leaving (Iraq) immediately would be in the best interest of the United States, because that place would implode and you would have to justify to the American people - with a nuclear armed Iran - why the place would be better off without us trying to create a stable democracy."

DeFazio said it's essential for the United States to begin negotiating a time line for withdrawal in the next six months to a year. "Our country would be better served, and Iraq as a country would be better served, if we have a plan and a time line to bring our troops home honorably and let Iraq stand on its own," he said.

"The violence would quickly die off and the few foreign fighters that are there could be easily rooted out and eliminated by the Iraqis. Right now, they have no incentive to do that because the United States is caught in the middle and sort of baby-sitting a civil war." The United States should "make clear that we will not have permanent bases in Iraq, we have no designs on the oil - that would abate a tremendous amount of the concerns of the Sunnis. It would give tremendous credibility to their government."

- Diane Dietz