U.S. Rep. Bentz talks Republican power, criticizes media in speech at eastern Oregon summit

Published 6:11 am Monday, July 28, 2025

Bentz was scheduled to discuss “resilience and environment” at the 2025 Eastern Oregon Economic Summit in Pendleton

Oregon’s lone Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz spent little time discussing the potential impacts of the recent GOP tax and spending cut law to energy, the environment, Medicaid or to the lives of his eastern Oregon constituents at his first public appearance since the bill became law July 4.

Bentz, who represents Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, was scheduled to speak on Friday about “resilience and the environment” at the 2025 Eastern Oregon Economic Summit at the Wildhorse Resort & Casino in Pendeleton. The nonprofit Eastern Oregon Women’s Coalition hosts the event annually to promote the region and discuss regional issues.

Instead, Bentz spent much of his 17-minute speech discussing what he sees as the benefits of consolidated Republican power across Congress and the White House, and frustrations with being in the minority party in the Oregon Legislature and in Washington, D.C. before Republicans gained complete control in 2025.

“We can talk all day long about how we’ve all got to get along, and how bipartisanship is great, and all of that. But when it comes down to it, it’s all about power,” he said, “and it’s about watching how that power is utilized, how it’s wielded, and then see if people who are in charge are big enough to take the blame.”

Analysis of Medicaid cuts ‘incorrect’

Bentz did not talk about the environment at all. The GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes provisions that phase out tax credits for clean energy development on wind and solar projects, as well as credits for electric vehicles, and make it cheaper and easier to mine, log and drill for fossil fuels on federal lands.

Bentz briefly touched on the law’s nearly $1 trillion in cuts to federal funding for Medicaid over the next decade. The Oregon Health Authority warns it could leave up to 200,000 Oregonians without health insurance over that time.

“I want to suggest that much of what has been said about the Medicaid portion of that bill is incorrect,” he said. “I do want to mention I want to see how this bill, this ‘great, big, beautiful bill’ as it’s called, plays out.”

Bentz represents more than 705,000 Oregonians — about 16% of the state’s population — who disproportionately rely on Medicaid for health insurance.

Bentz acknowledged that it will be a “challenge” to protect rural hospitals from Medicaid cuts, but he said he has been talking to Mehmet Oz, a doctor and former television personality who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania before Trump appointed him to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz told the Senate Finance Committee in March he would visit Malheur County within 60 days “if allowed.” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the committee, has urged him to visit, and a Wyden spokesman confirmed Friday that Oz has yet to accept his invitation.

More than half of Malheur County’s population is enrolled in Medicaid, the highest percentage of any county in Oregon. The county is entirely in Bentz’s district, as are seven of the other nine Oregon counties with 40% or more of their populations enrolled in Medicaid, according to Oregon Health Authority data.

“He’s (Oz) promised me that if we have issues with our rural hospitals, he’ll help out,” Bentz said.

Power and the press

Bentz also used his time to discuss party dynamics and figures, share anecdotes about his visit to the Pendleton Roundup in 2023 and to criticize media.

Earlier this year, Bentz said he was able to get administration officials to override the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department to have a gray wolf killed in part of his district where he said it was preying on livestock, something that would not have happened before, he explained. Gray wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Bentz said Republicans who might cast a dissenting vote on a bill that Trump or the administration want passed are rare, and that Trump is persuasive and offers lawmakers deals to get votes.

“What happens when we get down to it, which we have oftentimes since January, is that the people who decide they don’t want to go along for the ride in our caucus will get a call from the White House,” he said.

Bentz said he had become “impatient with the press, as everyone does in this job,” and characterized reporters as deliberately making villains out of him and other political figures.

“That’s what, sadly, the press has to do, I think, because that’s how they have to sell papers. Or there’s not papers anymore, clicks or whatever,” he said. “I would just say that I’m doing my very, very best to reach out to the press.”

Local Democrats protest Bentz

Before Bentz’s scheduled speech in the afternoon, about a dozen members of the Umatilla County Democrats protested the Congressman on a road outside of the Wildhorse Resort & Casino. Organizers said they only found out that Bentz would attend the event on Thursday, and quickly tried to gather people to protest.

Among them were two Pendleton nurses, Katrina Dielman and Janelle Miller, concerned with Bentz’s vote to cut funding to Medicaid and the impact it could have on rural hospitals.

“We see, we understand, the impact on the local hospitals that’s coming down the pike,” said Dielman, a nurse teacher at the Oregon Health & Science University campus in La Grande.

Last week, the two attended a town hall hosted by state Sen. Todd Nash, R-Enterprise, along with other Umatilla Democrats. They said Nash took all of their questions, and while they didn’t agree with his stance on many issues, they were heartened that he responded to their questions, and that he shared with them support for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants working in the U.S. without permanent legal status.

“I thought: ‘There’s our point of similarity.’ I don’t know that I have anything like that with Bentz,” Dielman said.