Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I am not sure that I believe the people were Tivo-ing, but if they were, it was only because of your eloquence when you talk about issues like bipartisanship, because you should be right to crow.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio. As you dig deeper into this budget, Mr. Ryan, what you find is the financial gimmickry involved in the President's claim that this budget will be balanced by 2012 is accomplished by forgetting about this little thing that hides in our Tax Code called the Alternative Minimum Tax. That is a difficult concept for some people to understand, but it is not going to be so difficult for millions of middle-class families to figure out when, next year and the year after that, they are going to be hit for the first time with a massive new tax increase. The Alternative Minimum Tax was introduced first to try to make sure that those at the highest end of income scales were forced to pay some type of income tax. But because we haven't adjusted that number over the years, more and more middle-class families are going to fall into that trap. Mr. Ryan, you are exactly right. You and Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz have talked about the fact that, during a time in which we are expending vast amounts of money overseas while we have major overdue investments here at home, we are giving away this multi-billion dollar tax cut to the richest 1 percent of Americans. That is wrong. We need to reinvest that money back into our infrastructure, back into education and energy and all of the things that help regular families. But what we need to tell people about is, this budget not only decreases taxes for folks at the very top of the income echelon, but it also raises taxes on middle-income folks, because the President in this budget does nothing to address that looming Alternative Minimum Tax. It is kind of a difficult subject to talk about, because it is complex tax policy, and you have to dig a little bit into that income tax form to figure out how much it is going to hit you. But it is going to hit you. And unless we do something about it, we are not just going to have a tax decrease for those at the top, we are going to have a big tax increase for those in the middle. And as we know, this budget does nothing to help the costs that all the middle-class families are facing. Their premiums go up every year from their employer, as the cost of higher education spirals, as we know, a 41 percent increase since 2001. This budget does nothing, little if nothing, to help those families. So, Mr. Ryan, this is a double whammy for American taxpayers. Not only are we sucking money out of the budget by giving away tax breaks to the very wealthiest, but we are then very explicitly hammering those in the middle income. But here is the good news. We know what the good news is, is that, as you have said, in previous years that budget which stands in front of Mr. Meek would have been delivered to Congress and would have had a little cursory look by the Members here and would have sailed out basically intact, at least when it comes to those priorities. This year it is very different. And by the grace of the American people that sent a new Democratic Congress here, that budget is going to have a very, very hard look, and it is going to look very, very different when it leaves here, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to health care, I agree with the President in one respect, it is time to start redistributing resources within our health care system. The problem comes when we talk about where we bring those resources from. The President's plan that he put before us in his State of the Union speech and in his budget presented to this House yesterday would take resources from families who have good insurance and give it to families who have no insurance. I would propose instead, and many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle would propose instead, that we take resources from the HMOs that have enjoyed massive profits off our Medicare systems, to take money from the drug companies who have enjoyed the pleasure of not having to negotiate with the bulk purchasing power of the Federal Government, and redistribute resources from those that are making millions of dollars of profit off this system and put those resources into the hands of those who have nothing. We can agree on some things. We can agree that this health care system has to be made better. It is just a matter of where we take and who we give it to.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You get 2 minutes, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I think every Member in this House, Republican or Democrat, can tell the same story about what this does for their district, and it is particularly acute in Pennsylvania. But let us hammer home what we are talking about. Mr. Ryan said it very eloquently, we are not just talking about writing a check. You are, Mr. Ryan. We are talking about making choices, we are not talking about solving these problems by putting money into health care, putting more money in education. We are talking about where to make choices on the budget, on who to help and who to take from, who to help and who to take. Let's start with the health care budget for a moment. Let's start with the premise that we need to rein in the health care budget. It is spiraling at a cost well above inflation, it is one of the biggest cost drivers in our budgets, in State budgets, families' budgets and small businesses' budgets. But here is the choice that you have. You can either raise the costs for beneficiaries for seniors and for people within the children with within that SCHIP program. You can cut people out of the system, you can take kids off the rolls or seniors off the rolls, or, you can choose to ratchet down some of the profits that you are handing to the drug companies, or you can choose to roll back some of the massive overpayments that we have given to the HMOs, the health maintenance organizations, in the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act. Common sense tells you that as you are looking at massive record profits being wrapped up by the latter groups, that maybe, maybe, if you have that choice, you should take a look at wiping away that little slush fund that you gave to the HMOs, or allowing the Federal Government to negotiate using their bulk purchasing power to just trim a little bit off of those billion dollar profits being made by the drug companies. Instead, this budget makes a different choice. It cuts people off of the rolls and it raises the fees for people on there. So this is not just about writing a bigger check.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. To me, this budget does not spare anybody in who it offends. This budget has something to offend poor people, middle class folks, and it has a lot to offend rich people in this country. My district is good enough that it has a little bit of everything, and part of the reason that some of us got sent here after having the other party represent our districts for a very long time was that the fiscal policies of this President, which are symbolized by this document he sent here, are offensive to people of every income bracket. For the folks at the bottom of the scale who need those public schools, who need those health care programs, well it takes money out of their pocket. From middle class families, who are trying to get their kids through college, who are trying to fill up their tank and go to work, it does not do anything for them either. It cuts alternative energy programs. For people at the top end of the income scale who admittedly are giving a decent percentage of their income to the Federal Government, they are looking at the charts that Mr. Ryan is throwing up here and saying how on earth can I justify giving a big chunk of my income to the Federal Government and the Federal Government sending more and more control of our money overseas to Chinese and OPEC Nations. One last thing on that point. We also do not give people at the upper end income brackets enough credit. They see what is happening to the poor families, to the senior citizens struggling to decide whether they pay their property tax bill or whether they pay their prescription drugs. Those same people who have enjoyed these massive tax breaks, a lot of them will say to me, you know what, I cannot understand the government who has the choice to put $40,000 in my pocket or help the guy around the corner from me pay for his prescription drugs for another month and he chooses to give me $40,000. There are people of every income in this country who will find something offensive in this budget, and Mr. Ryan is exactly right. For the last 6 years, as you guys said over and over again, all this House was was a big rubber stamp on that budget when it showed up here and no longer. We now have to stand up for all the people who have found something to object to in that budget.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield for a moment on that point? Just very quickly, I want to hammer that home. Because when people out there in the public, and I did this too when I was watching Congress for years, sees some of these cuts to programs here that people up here in Washington talk about, you know, the government tightening their belts and doing the right thing for curbing the growth of spending programs; what they don't understand is that just passes on the buck, as you said, to the states. Now, the States sometimes pick up the tab and pass it along in increases in the sales tax or the income tax. But in Connecticut what often happens is that the cuts to these programs just get passed down again. In Connecticut, they get passed down to the local towns, counties, and other States. And in Connecticut, the property taxes just go up. So all of this supposed belt tightening that happens here to programs that need to get taken care of, whether they be education programs or health care programs, just get passed down and somebody else pays for them. That really in the end, Mr. Altmire, to me is one of the worst cases of fiscal irresponsibility, because you are pretending that you are taking care of a problem when really you are just handing it down for somebody else to take care of. And we will take some hits up here if we need to in order to get taken care of what needs to be taken care of here rather than just making somebody else be responsible.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr. Altmire. It is a pleasure to be with my new 30-Something colleague on the floor here to discuss what I think you set out before us very accurately is a fiscally reckless and irresponsible budget, but also a morally irresponsible budget. You outlined what the problem here is. The problem here, Mr. Speaker, is that we have got a budget that doesn't paint the whole picture for this Congress, doesn't tell the whole story for this country. We have got a budget which claims to be in balance. Mr. Altmire, I remember being here for my first State of the Union speech, I did not sit too far away from you, and we listened to the President stand up at the podium there at the second level and say we could work together on a balanced budget, that we could do the right thing for the American people, do the things that Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan and Ms. Wasserman Schultz have been talking about for 2 years in the 30-Something Working Group, and that is making sure that we don't pass on the cost of government to our children and our grandchildren by these massive deficits that we are racking up. Instead, the President handed us a budget today, a pretty big stack of papers there, that claims to balance the budget, but does so by omitting some of the biggest costs within the budget. At the top of the list is the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are not in that budget. Those are emergency expenditures, emergency appropriations, and so the President hasn't seen fit to incorporate those in the budget. He also doesn't include the cost of fixing what is called the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is a tax that, if not repealed, it was supposed to be for the wealthiest taxpayers, but because we haven't made any adjustments over the years, this Alternative Minimum Tax is all of a sudden not going to be much of an alternative, because millions of middle class families throughout this country are going to have to pay it. So that is not in there either. By the way, it also assumes that we are going to take in billions of dollars in revenue beyond what most reasonable economists will tell you we are going to bring in in the next 5 to 10 years. So, Mr. Speaker, what we have is a budget that doesn't tell the whole story. I can balance my budget pretty easily at home if I just, for instance, don't include the cost of my mortgage. I could spend everything. I could buy five flat screen TVs for my house, I could get a caretaker to mow my lawn and cut my shrubs, so long as my budget didn't include my mortgage. But, do you know what? My family and your family and everybody else's family in this country has to make their budget meet, their revenues and expenditures meet, by incorporating all of their costs. The budget that you held up there doesn't do that. It only encapsulates parts of our costs.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We are talking here about adding $3.2 trillion to the deficit over the next 2 years, $3.2 trillion to a deficit that is already exploding beyond any numbers of previous Congresses. Remember, this Congress inherited when the Republicans took control in 1994 a surplus. They had money to spend and they have turned it into record deficits, and now the President is going to add on to it. Now, here is the other part, Mr. Altmire, that creates the problem. This budget that was presented to us today not only doesn't include the cost of the war, doesn't include fixing this middle class tax increase, also paints a real rosy picture in term of revenues, but it also has some tax breaks in it, but they are tax breaks for the very, very wealthy. We have got another $2 trillion in tax breaks over the next 10 years in this budget, and as we know because we have all seen the charts in the 30-something Working Group, because I have watched them on TV talk about it for the last 2 years. Those tax breaks, Mr. Altmire, are going to end up going to the richest 1, 2, 3 percent of Americans, and the hard working middle class families in and around the Pittsburgh area where you are and in and around northwestern Connecticut aren't going to get the benefit of those tax breaks. So what throws this thing so out of balance is not just that we are not counting some massive expenditures in the war in Iraq, and hopefully the Congress is going to do something about that, but it also includes in it these big tax breaks that just aren't going to go to families like yours or families throughout Philadelphia, throughout Connecticut, in fact throughout this whole country. So Mr. Speaker and Members, we have got some work to do on this budget. And I am frankly upset by the budget that the President put before us, but I am glad that we have a party in control and a leadership in control of this House that is going to take that budget, it is going to take that budget and twist it and turn it so that middle class families end up coming out in the lead at the end of this process. Because what has happened in the past is the President puts forth one of these backwards budget, the Republicans sort of tinker with it here and there to make sure that it ends up favoring the special interests of the lobbyists that are currently in favor in Congress, and in the end people that we care about don't get helped at all. So, Mr. Altmire, I am just looking forward to a budget process here which takes I think what is a very flawed document and turns it around and makes it work for regular middle class, working class families throughout this country.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, let me thank you, Mr. Meek, on behalf of my constituents and the people throughout this country for the vigilance that you and Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Ryan showed for the last 2 years, and in your case longer than that. There were a lot of things you could be doing late at night when Mr. Altmire and I might have caught you on TV into the wee hours. But you were out here spreading the message that it was time for working class, regular folks throughout this country to have their day here again. There had been enough time for the special interests and lobbyists and everyone else to have their day in Congress. It was time for regular people to have their day in the people's House. I want to add something. We use this term ``Republican leadership,'' and I think that is important. Because one of the things that you have figured out over the last couple of weeks is that there is a difference between the Republican leadership and a lot of the rest of the folks in the Republican Party. Maybe I should be careful to not give too much credit to the other side. But it seems like on every measure the Republican leadership trots out and says, the Republicans are going to be against raising the minimum wage, and they turn around to see who is following. And, guess what, they vote for it. The Republican leadership says, we are going to be against cutting the student loan interest rates. They run out here and turn around to see who is following them, and there are even more of their colleagues voting with the Democrats. They say, this process is broken, we are going to vote against this continuing resolution, and they turn around, and there are 50-some-odd of their Members supporting it. Why? Because, on average, we had 60-some-odd votes for every piece of the 100 hours agenda from the Republican side and 50-plus votes for the continuing resolution. Why do you have so many Republican votes? Because there are Republicans, just as there are Democrats, who are in touch with their constituents. When they go home for weekends, they hear about the struggles that middle-class families are going through to pay for health care and education.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Well, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) for yielding. One of the things I realized when I came down here in January was that you get a lot of analogies, and some of them work, some of them don't. But listening to our colleagues criticize the budget, the continuing resolution we just passed here, you kind of think of the old ``bull in the china shop'' analogy. This is kind of like the bull walking into the china shop spending a good half an hour breaking everything in the china shop; the owner finally having the good sense to kick him out, and then him showing up about 2 days later and asking why everything hasn't been fixed yet. I mean, that is essentially, what has happened here is that there has been so much damage, Mr. Speaker, done to this budget by virtue of nine of the 11, nine of the 11 appropriations bills not being completed by the end of business. And an important thing to note is that, you know, Congress was back here in the holiday season in November and December trying to finish those budget bills. And I am just learning, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, about the budget process, but from what I know, November, December is pretty late to be even working on those budget bills. Those budget bills were supposed to be done over the summer and fall. And so even giving themselves an extra 4 or 5 months to complete those bills, they still weren't done on time. And so when the Democrats finally were put back in charge of this place by virtue of the millions of Americans who stood up across this country to start putting common sense middle class values first, the people who put Mr. Altmire and myself here in Congress, when they finally, we finally sort of reentered the china shop and realized that everything had been broken, we realized it was going to take a little while to clean everything up. And what we did today, this continuing resolution which keeps this government running for the next several months, is an important first step because there are some critical programs, veterans benefits at the top of that list, Mr. Altmire, that are funded here. What else are we talking about? We are talking about Pell grants. Even after coming before this body and, with remarkable bipartisan support, decreasing the rate of student loans for millions of students across this country, we came back in this budget, we increased the maximum Pell grant by $260, to over $4,000, $4,300 for the average student. We put in new money or in schools that are failing to meet the Head Start standards. Mr. Altmire, you know that both of us heard so much about that from our school districts over the course of the campaign and over the course of the last month. Now, 6,700 schools across this country that are failing to meet those No Child Left Behind standards are going to get new funding from this government in order to keep on operating. We increased community health center funding by $207 million. Community health centers in this very broken health care system are sometimes the place of last resort, often the place of only resort for so many uninsured families. We are now going to make sure that they get the funding that they deserve. So in so many ways we started to clean up the mess that that bull made for the last 12 years. We are starting to put the china back together. We are starting to buy a little bit of new stuff to put on the shelves. And it is going to take a little while. It is going to take a little while. But it is important to remember that the work we did here today, I think, is just a beginning on that front, Mr. Altmire. And I join Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Ryan in commending you for standing up for the veterans in your district, because when you speak for those veterans, it is not just in your district, it is for all the veterans in my district and, as an extension, it is for all the future veterans, because as you know, we are so lucky to have an all volunteer military. But if they think that by going into the service they will return home and find a country and a Nation that does not honor their service, well, then we are going to have a lot harder time than we are already having finding people to fight the future battles and wars that this country may engage in. I would yield. I see Mr. Meek has joined us. But I would yield to Mr. Altmire and thank him again for his advocacy over the past several weeks.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Would the gentlewoman yield for a moment? And I think she is exactly right, and I think that that disconnect that you talk about, that certainly was in existence here for a very long time was one of the reasons why we now have a Democratic majority. The people last summer were fueling up their cars at $3.50 a gallons. We are finding that all of a sudden, they were having to pay $50 co-pays rather than $25 co-pays. And they looked at a Congress which seemed pretty incredulous to their concerns, that seemed to watch without listening. And you are right, people get hurt by the decisions they make down here. And I will give you an example. In my district I have a senior housing complex in Torrington, major place where a lot of seniors live in one of the biggest cities in my district, and we have had some security problems there, some people coming in off the streets and had a couple violent incidents. Well, most of the facility and the staff there are financed through Federal grants. Well, because this Congress, over the last 12 years, slashed Federal housing funds to the bone, they have had to make major layoffs at that housing complex. In fact, it finally came down to a very difficult but unfortunately necessary decision that that housing facility made to lay off their security guards. That is going to put hundreds of senior citizens at risk in this senior housing complex. And they come to their local elected officials, their State-elected officials and ask, what can you do to help? And everybody points back to where the problem came from. It was years of neglect down here in Washington of housing programs, just as there were years of neglect years to health care programs, years of neglect to defense and certain national security programs. And in order to reinstill that commitment to the seniors of Torrington, to those veterans in Pennsylvania, it is going to take a little while. But if you are back in your communities, if you are talking to people, regular middle-class, working folks people, you will hear those stories on how the votes we take here affect people back in Connecticut, back in Florida, back in Pennsylvania. And for some reason, whether it was the power that went to people's head, whether it was the pomp and circumstance that surrounds being a Member of Congress, for some reason, over the last 12 years, and in particular, I think, Mr. Altmire, over the past 4, 5, or 6 years, there was a wall that was put up around Washington, D.C., and folks that were controlling the committees here and the budget here just were not listening to people back in State of Connecticut, State of Pennsylvania, Florida, and throughout this country, because if they did, they would know we have to put more money in housing. If they listened to those veterans that you and I talk to every day at people's doors, they would know that men and women who came back from Iraq, came back from Vietnam, World War II veterans are struggling. And what we are now doing here in starting to clean up that mess is also to start listening again. And I believe Ms. Wasserman Schultz is very correct on that notion. I yield to Mr. Meek.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That's right. I think what happened here for the last 12 years, the agenda on the House floor was a Republican agenda. Republicans supported it, and they twisted some Republican arms to support it. The agenda that is now before the House of Representatives is a people's agenda. That is why you see Republicans and Democrats supporting it. Because the agenda doesn't have to do with somebody on the seventh floor of the Republican National Committee or somebody on the third floor of the Democratic National Committee. The agenda has to do with the people that we meet at the diner and the senior housing center. That is why I think for the next 2 years, I know for the next 2 years, we are going to see Republicans and Democrats coming together. Because this isn't a party agenda anymore. This is a people's agenda. That may sound corny, but it is probably the best way to articulate what is happening here. As a new Member, it fills me with joy and pride to be part of this.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just want to warn the gentleman from Pennsylvania that you need to say both the e-mail address and the Web site or you will be scolded by some of the more veteran Members of the 30 Something Group. So I want to give you that piece of advice as you close.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I will just key off of an important word there and that is investments. You know, how you balance the budget into the future is to make sure that you are doing the right things now to make sure that our economy is humming 10 years and 20 years from now. So when you talk about this investing in renewable and alternative energy sources, I mean, that is going to be our export. That is going to be what America can renew its economy around, is our ability to be the producer of all these new energy technologies. When you talk about investing in education, making sure that kids are educated so that America, which right now grows as an economy because we have the best-trained, best-educated work force in the country, continues to be that beacon of economic development due to our work force. Those are the type of investments that have been long cast aside but now we are going to start making again so that we make sure that you know when we are long gone from here that we have left an economy and we have left a budget that makes sense.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. The e-mail address is 30SomethingDems@ mail.house.gov. So I like nothing more than to be the student in this relationship, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you for yielding, Mr. Meek. You talked about our commitment, failed commitment, over the past several years of Republican rule in this House to our veterans, and I think of what message we send, Mr. Speaker and Members, to the young men and women who are coming back to this country who have fought for us in a war that they are beginning to understand, I think, has been so badly mismanaged and a war in which this Congress has so miserably overseen for the past 3, 4 years. But I also think about what message it sends to prospective young men and women who may want to join our Armed Forces, because we are so lucky in this country to have an all- volunteer military, and it is a blessing for each and every one of us who lives under this blanket of freedom that our volunteer military provides. The message that we are sending them today, Mr. Meek and Mr. Speaker, is that, one, when we send them into battle, we are not going to do it in a way that protects them with the armor and equipment that they need, that we are not prepared to send them into a conflict that we have planned for in advance for success. But, even given all that, that when they come back to this country, unconscionably, we are not going to make sure that they have the health care that they need, that they won't wait in lines for procedures that they need, that they won't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money out of pocket for the drugs that they need to treat the injuries that they suffered on behalf of this Nation. So for me, Mr. Speaker and Members, the issue of veterans really ties it all together for us because it talks about the values that we have as a Nation to those who have served. It talks about the misguided policies of this administration and the peril that we have put these young men and women in. As 30-Somethings that get to stand here and as a very new member of this group, we all have friends and cousins and brothers and sisters who are fighting there, and we hear the stories firsthand from our generation or those just a few years younger than us as they come back, and the stories only get worse. We give credit to those who served, and we should give them the benefit of their service when they return here. And I think you are very right, Mr. Meek, to point out that that was a very noticeable absence from the President's speech, to give credit to them not just in words, not just in Veterans Day and Memorial Day ceremonies, but in the acts and in the funding that this body is charged to provide for those men and women both when they are abroad serving for this country and here at home. And having watched the 30-Somethings do work on this floor, I know what great advocates you have been for those men and women who have served for us, Mr. Meek.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Meek was right on. The new class that was sent here to Washington was sent here to make sure that this place is returned to that hardworking family that you are talking about. You know, we know the statistics, the terrible statistics of the number of military families that are on food stamps, the number of military families, ex-military families that have to come to the government for some assistance just to get by every day. I mean, these are amongst the legions of families across this country that are scraping to get by every day. We have a growing economy. You know the story, Mr. Meek. We have a growing economy. Production is up. GDP is up. And wages are flat. Wages for regular, ordinary Americans are going nowhere while wages for CEOs and the folks at the very top of that economic scale are doing very well. And none of us begrudge folks that have done well in business making a dollar. I mean, that is the genius of our American economy. But what it does is it leaves all of those people behind while a very few at the top are well off. Here is where we come in, I think. I think we come in in that our job, not necessarily to completely level that playing field, but our job certainly is not to exacerbate the differences that already exist. And when President Bush goes to Illinois, if he spends a little time moving away from the motorcade and the Secret Service lines, he will find a society there in which there are deep divisions between those folks in the middle that are just trying to cling on to that middle class, and the folks that are doing very well. Our job, you know frankly, is to not make that situation worse. And the tax breaks that this previous Congress gave away to a lot of those oil companies, to the deals that they cut with the drug companies to give them record profits off this health care system, have left a lot of people behind, have left millions of hardworking Americans struggling, producing more, working harder than ever, and not seeing a return for their dollar. You know the costs of this war. I have heard you talk about it on this floor. But we are spending $8 billion a month in Iraq right now. And we need to start having a conversation about how we spend that money here in the United States of America, and how we use that money to retrain workers that have been laid off due to the globalization of our economy. We need to talk about how to spend that money to get kids an education that they deserve, to get them out of school in 4 years, rather than what is all too often happening, that it takes 6, 8, 10 years for some students to get degrees. That is where we need to be investing. That is the right thing for our economy. That is the right thing for our kids. And ultimately it is the right thing for our men and women that are fighting overseas. So I appreciate the focus that we are going to hopefully be able to add to the President's visit, to make sure that when he goes out there into the world that he sees all of America, that he does not just see the folks that have been the beneficiaries of the largesse of government in this Congress for all too long, the oil companies, the drug companies, the Fortune 500s, that he sees the rest of the folks that are struggling. Now, he is going to get an opportunity, as you know, Mr. Speaker and Members, to do right by those folks, because hopefully we are going to get to his desk an increase in the minimum wage, we are going to get to his desk a decrease in the student loan rate. We are going to put on his desk for his signature a repeal of those massive tax breaks to the oil companies. He is going to have a choice then, and I hope he listens to what happened on election day. I hope he listens to the legions of folks who sent us here, some of us for the first time and others back for another tour of duty in this Chamber. I hope that he listens to the folks that are asking this government to start sticking up for people that have had very little voice, very little voice except for some people standing here late at night trying to shed light on what has been really happening in this country, Mr. Meek.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I would just say, it is funny because there was kind of a low bar set. And I at some levels am pleased that I was not in the same shoes that Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek were, that I did not have to go back to my constituency for the last several years and answer for what has happened here, because the answer is, not much. You know, folks out there were struggling with these energy prices just going through the roof. Health care was becoming harder and harder to find, good health care at least. People were crying out for work on immigration. People were trying to get help bringing up their wages to a liveable wage, and they were not hearing anything. I mean, it was deafening silence from down here. So I do not have as much comparative experience as you, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek, do. But walking around the district in Connecticut for the past several weekends it has been euphoric. And I used that word the last time I was down here with you. It is really this sort of sense that, oh, my gosh, our government is working again. Our government is back to work again; and it used to be that that is what happened. It used to be that there would be a problem, you would go to your legislator, they would come down here and they would do something about it. And people have come to expect inertia. That is what sort of was just the run of the mill down here in Washington, that you have a problem and then you have to wait about 5, 10 years, in order to get something to happen. I felt the same thing, Mr. Ryan, that people you know, it is too bad frankly that people have come to be surprised by the fact that there could be immediate action. Because that is what they should get from their government, and they are getting it now.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I am glad I can help you with that cathartic experience. WWW.speaker.gov/30something is where you can find information on a lot of things we have talked about here. I am here to work, Ms. Wasserman Schultz and I know there are about 40 other first termers who are here to do the same thing.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Moving on.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And the guilt is deep inside me that I am stealing Mr. Ryan's thunder for twice in a row here.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank you, Mr. Meek. It is an honor to be standing in the traditional place of Mr. Ryan today, and I will attempt to equal at least half of his eloquence on this floor. You are right, I think there are a lot of missing pieces from that speech last night. It was my first opportunity to sit and listen to a Presidential State of the Union, and you couldn't help but leave disappointed. There were a lot of promises that I think the American people were looking to be fulfilled in that speech. Mr. Meek, I think you were exactly right when you talked about a sense of bipartisanship, which I think is infectious in this building right now due to the first 100-hours agenda that, as we know, drew bipartisan support, on average 60 Members of the other aisle supporting each piece of that 100-hours agenda. That bipartisanship seems to be lost when it comes to the issue of Iraq. It doesn't go without note that since the President had unveiled his plan to escalate this war, to put another 21,000 brave men and women in harm's way to do a job that Colin Powell and others will tell you 100,000 people can't do.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And give out the Web site for the 30- something Working Group: www.speaker.gov/30something. If you go there, you will get all the good information that we talked about today and participate online in the discussion that we have been having here.