DeFazio plans even-handed role as key member of new majority.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

Rep. Peter DeFazio wasn't just bragging when he recently told a Eugene crowd that his accomplishments as one of Congress' outnumbered Democrats would be hard to top next year.

The Springfield Democrat also was doing his part to lower expectations for when his party's congressional takeover elevates him to a plumb assignment, probably as chairman of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee.

"My performance in the minority is going to be a hard act to follow," DeFazio said in an interview, paraphrasing a line he used Thursday at a ceremony to deliver the first EmX bus for Lane Transit District's new Bus Rapid Transit system.

That was one of several transportation projects DeFazio has helped fund with the $450 million he's channeled to Oregon as a ranking Democrat on that same subcommittee.

Should he rise to the chairmanship, DeFazio would preside over the distribution of $60 billion a year for "pretty much everything that moves on the ground" - mass transit, light rail, highways, bridges and pipelines. Heavy rail is the only surface transportation mode outside his panel's jurisdiction.

Thanks in part to his role on the transportation panel, the state recently ended its long-running stretch as one that sent more tax money to Washington, D.C., than it got back in federal spending.

The Democratic majorities gained in Tuesday's election have DeFazio and other members of his party contemplating the "whole new world" that awaits them in January when the next Congress is sworn in.

Like many other Democrats, DeFazio said he is eager to revive Congress' oversight role, which he said has been "kind of forgotten over the last five years since (the Republicans) didn't want to ever question, challenge or offend or take a different position from that of the White House."

For DeFazio's panel, that means scrutinizing "this looming problem of Mexican trucks roaming the entire continent," he said, adding that he also wants to look into the safety of current driving-time restrictions on commercial truck drivers and of interstate and school buses and their drivers.

DeFazio's years in the minority helped him develop his reputation as a dogged critic of the ruling Republicans. So, will his gruff and grumpy exterior be softened by the luxuries and privileges of membership in the ruling party?

Longtime friend and ally Bob Ackerman doesn't think so.

"That's Peter's trademark and it won't change," said Ackerman, an outgoing member of the Oregon House. "Being in the minority or the majority won't change his attitude toward achieving the public good."

Beyond his own committee work, DeFazio said he was optimistic that with the Democrats in charge - including four of Oregon's five House members and one of its two senators - there could be progress in other areas.

For federal forest management, he expressed hope that the thinning legislation he sponsored would move forward. The bill would increase the federal harvest by 400 million board-feet a year and improve forest health, said DeFazio, who blamed its hang-up in the GOP-controlled Congress on that party's preference to "fight over the old growth" than move forward with legislation like his own.

He also plans to revive one of his proposals on mining reform that has languished since early in his congressional career. That bill would overhaul the 1872 mining act, which is "giving away our resources" by allowing foreign corporations to make claims for minerals on public lands without paying royalties. He had a bill requiring royalties back in the early 1990s, just before he and fellow Democrats lost the majority in 1994 to the Republicans.

DeFazio said being in the majority this time should be more rewarding, since the same seniority system that kept him from chairing a committee during his first stint in the majority will position him to run a powerful panel the second time around.

"I was a kid, too young to enjoy it and I wasn't senior enough," he said of his first go-round in the majority, from 1987-94.

Those dozen years in the minority did more than just teach DeFazio to relish the chance to be in charge. It also gave him the perspective to appreciate the way another Oregon politician, in this case a Republican, conducted business.

"I learned a lot when I watched Mark Hatfield when I was the new member of the delegation," DeFazio said, referring to Oregon's longtime and now retired senior senator. He recalled how Hatfield, as appropriations committee chairman, had ruled with such fairness to the Democrats that when his party lost its majority in 1986, he came back as the panel's ranking minority member with virtually the same clout.

"That's the kind of example I want to set," DeFazio said. "I'm going to be very fair to the Republicans. Nothing's forever."

Reporter Jeff Wright contributed to this article.