When it comes to votes on the House floor, the gap between Rep. Kurt Schrader and his fellow House Democrats sometimes resembles a canyon.
Take the Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction plan, crafted by former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and former Democratic White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.
It calls for a blend of budget cuts and increased revenues through tax reform to cut more than $4 trillion from federal deficits during 10 years.
When it came to a vote in March, Schrader, D-Ore., was one of only 38 yes votes — including just 22 of 190 Democrats — against 382 in opposition.
When it came to extending cuts in Social Security payroll taxes for another year, Schrader was one of 41 Democrats who voted no. He said the cuts undermine the long-term viability of the system.
Or take the vote at the start of the 112th Congress among House Democrats to decide who would be minority leader. Schrader was one of 19 Democrats who voted against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. He said the disastrous results for the party in the 2010 elections warranted a change in leadership.
“I see myself as pretty much a centrist,” Schrader said in an interview.
A lot of it, he said, has to do with his positions on fiscal issues, where he calls himself “more conservative than most Democrats.”
In an era of increasing partisan strife, moderates are increasingly rare.
Schrader’s willingness to intermittently buck his party results put him well to the right of Democratic congressional leaders in studies by Washington publications.
National Journal, for instance, ranks him the least liberal of any of the four Democrats in the Oregon delegation. Overall, it rated him more liberal than 64.7 percent of the House in 2011, a slight increase from his 60 percent score for 2010.
Congressional Quarterly said he voted with the majority of House Democrats only 76 percent of the time in 2011. He voted in agreement with President Barack Obama’s positions only 72 percent of the time.
Only 19 Democrats voted with the president less often.
“The recent redistricting has made this (the 5th Congressional) district potentially even more competitive,” said Ellen Seljan, a political scientist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.
“It’s not surprising to see an ideologically mixed voting record in a very ideologically mixed district.”
But others, such as Fred Thompson of Salem, Schrader’s Republican opponent for re-election, doubt the incumbent’s claim of moderation.
“He votes party line unless it’s near election time, and then he moves right,” Thompson said.
There is plenty of liberalism in Schrader’s votes, the Republican said, noting especially his support of Obama’s $800 billion-plus economic stimulus package in 2009 and the health care reform law of 2010.
“He calls himself bipartisan,” Thompson said. “There wasn’t one Republican that voted for that (the health care law). You would think that would have given him pause.”
Schrader, while not taking anything back, acknowledged, “The health care bill was a tough, tough vote.”
He said he is proud to join other Democrats on issues such as labor rights. In May, Schrader voted in support of project labor agreements, pacts between contractors and unions that set employment conditions for particular work sites.
Although he voted in 2011 for the Korea and Panama free trade agreements, he opposed a similar pact with Colombia because of violence against labor leaders and activists in that country.
Schrader also has been supportive of abortion rights. On one of the latest flare-ups, he opposed a Republican proposal in May that would have banned abortions based on gender. Abortion-rights activists saw it as another attempt to limit access to the procedure by threatening doctors with jail time.
The Oregon Democrat also has voted to protect federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
But the veterinarian-lawmaker veers back to the right in voicing support for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, although he wants to give the federal government more flexibility in tough economic times than Republican ideas for such an amendment.
Referring to his days as a state legislator, he said, “I saw firsthand how federal deficit spending supports the states in times of crisis.”
An area where Schrader is apt to zig-zag is energy and environmental issues.
Schrader has been supportive of hydroelectric power — disdained by many environmentalists — as well as the Keystone XL Pipeline, although he says it should go through the standard approval process and not be expedited.
He also has joined with Republicans to repeal new Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards for cement manufacturers and to limit EPA regulation of farm dust.
But he supported a controversial cap-and-trade proposal as way to limit greenhouse gases.
The 60-year-old Democrat said of his voting record: “It depends on the issue for Kurt Schrader. I’m about solutions.”
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