Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I was a Larry Bird fan from way back.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here to open up for another discussion with the 30-something Working Group. We will be joined later by our friends from Florida who have been rooting on the Miami Heat in the last few days and are very excited about some key victories. So Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz will be here soon. The issue tonight, Mr. Speaker, for all of us as Americans, I believe, is one of the most pressing issues our country has faced in a long time, and that is the issue of our national debt and our annual deficits that we are running here in the United States of America. We have always prided ourselves in the United States of being able to balance our budgets and pay our bills, and making sure that we were like the average family in the United States that had to deal with paying bills, making sure at the end of the month we at least broke even, maybe even had a little bit to save. Throughout the course of the 1990s, under the leadership of President Clinton, and in 1993 with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, we passed a budget resolution, as Democrats, that balanced the budget and led to one of the greatest economic expansions in the history of the world, which lifted up millions of people, created 20 million new jobs, and led to prosperity for everybody in the country. We put in place PAYGO rules, which said that you can't spend any money that you don't either raise taxes to spend it or you cut spending somewhere, but what you don't do is you don't go out and borrow it. You don't go to China or Japan or OPEC and borrow the money. You make sure we have the money that we generated ourselves, and we pay our bills and meet our obligations: Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, education, Pell Grants, health care, children's health care, or whatever the priorities may be, we would have the money to pay for it. So the discussion tonight, Mr. Speaker, is of an issue that is pressing not only to the 30-something generation, because we are going to be around to pay the bills for the reckless spending, and our kids and our grandkids, the next couple of generations coming, but you can't get something for nothing. And right now the Republican House and Senate and President Bush are basically living on a credit card at the expense of the next generation of Americans who are going to be forced to pay the bill. Mr. Speaker, I know you have seen this chart before, but it is indicative of the situation we are in in the United States of America. In 224 years, from 1776 to the year 2000, all of the Presidents and all of the Congresses borrowed a total of $1.01 trillion from foreign sources, foreign interests, in 224 years. The current President and the current Republican House and the current Republican Senate have managed, from 2001 to 2005, to borrow more money from foreign interests than all the previous Presidents in the previous 224 years. This is staggering. And you may ask, Mr. Speaker, well, what are the 30-somethings talking about this for? We are supposed to talk about issues, Mr. Speaker, that affect kids and 20-somethings and 30-somethings, and young families. This is the most pressing issue for the next generation of Americans because we are going to be the ones left footing the bill. When tax rates go up for the 30-somethings or the 20-somethings, or the kids that are in college or in grade school now, because of this reckless borrowing, it is irresponsible. It is not in the public interest. It is not in the interest of the next generation, Mr. Speaker. And, therefore, it is an issue for the 30-something Democratic Working Group to talk about. So it may be $1 trillion. Where are we getting it from, Mr. Speaker? Look at this picture of America, and it shows exactly where we are getting it: $682 billion from Japan; $249 billion from China, the U.K., the Caribbean, Taiwan, Germany, Korea, Canada; and $67.8 billion we have borrowed from OPEC countries. OPEC countries. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the cost of gas and with the price of a barrel of oil, that the United States has been so reckless and so irresponsible that we would go out and put ourselves in the position where we have to borrow money from OPEC and borrow money from China? This has a lot of different effects. This is just like when you get a loan for your house. You look at your house, and your house costs $110,000, and then when you take out a loan, you look at what you are going to end up paying to actually get your $110,000 house, and it is thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars more. This is what we are doing here. We may borrow $682 billion from Japan, we may borrow $250 billion from China, but how much more do we have to pay on interest, Mr. Speaker? That money is not going to be going to other priorities here in the United States of America. So China, who has been wiping out the middle class of the United States of America, especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Indiana and Connecticut, and a lot of the other areas of the country, China is loaning us money. We pay them the interest on it, they take the interest, make some money off the Americans, and invest that back into their state-owned companies that will compete directly with American manufacturers here in the United States of America. Now, I know we are in a global economy, and nobody wants to say that we are not going to trade. We all know that is ridiculous. We all know it is going to happen. But to borrow money from a country that is going to take the interest that you pay them on it and invest it back in to compete against you makes it even more unfair than the situation already is. You are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. It is irresponsible, and it is reckless because we have to pay the interest, but you are also aiding and abetting your competition every day. Again, here is what we borrowed. The increase in the national debt, $1.18 trillion; and of that, $1.16 was borrowed from foreign interests, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and only $.02 trillion borrowed from domestic interests. And let me make one more point before the Miami Heat takes the floor again. This is the kicker, Mr. Speaker. All of that money that we borrow and that we have to pay interest on, here is what it looks like in the 2007 budget authority. This is billions of dollars. The big red bar on the left is what we have to pay in interest, interest on the money that we are borrowing. So this money that the American people send down here and we spend it on education and health care and this and that, the biggest portion goes to just paying interest on the debt; and China and these other countries will take that money and reinvest it back into their state- owned, Communist-run facilities. But look how it compares to what we are spending on education or on homeland security or on veterans. This is really the icing on the cake. This is what makes it so irresponsible. Not only are we putting the burden on our kids, but there are current investments that we cannot make because we are forced to spend all this money on just the interest on the debt. I yield to the Miami Heat.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, do the Celtics still have a team?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The issue here, and I love that chart because it does put everything into perspective, is that this outfit is leaving America worse off than they found it, and that is really upsetting. When you think about long term what we are going to have to deal with, what the 30-somethings and people with kids in college and grade school, what kind of country are you leaving these kids, that is what frustrates me. We have an obligation to make sure that we leave the garden patch a little nicer than we found it. And the debt, the war, you are strapping this next generation for generations. We are going to spend our entire life in public life or our generation's service to the country is going to be fixing the war in Iraq, balancing the budget, and trying to make ourselves competitive in a brutal global economy. It is frustrating, but it is the overarching theme that the Republican Senate and House and White House are leaving the country worse off than they found it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We don't mind you making a profit. Profit is not a dirty word. Go out and make money, hire Americans, this is good news. But do it in the national interest.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think he made $390-some million. So they are paying this guy a $398 million retirement package, $2 million tax break, and companies like this are only investing $10 million, when they can give them a retirement package of $400 million. Newt Gingrich said, just to wrap up, our good friend, Mr. Speaker, about the Republican Congress, ``They are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.'' This is your laundry list that you just mentioned. Mr. Speaker, all of these posters are available on our web site for other Members to access at www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. All these posters are available. We missed our good friend Mr. Meek, and we cheer on the Miami Heat.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And it is not like we have the money to give the person making a million dollars.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right. And what I really love is what John Tanner's bill is doing, and John Tanner is a Democrat from Tennessee, a Blue Dog Democrat, and this is just good stuff. We are going to audit the government. When we get back in charge, we are going to throw everything on the table, and we are going to audit everything. We are just going to start over, figure out why we are wasting so much money. And Mr. Tanner and I had a great conversation, Mr. Speaker, last week. And we are going to have Mr. Tanner down here because he needs to participate in the 30-something group to explain to the House of Representatives just exactly what his bill does. But in a thumbnail sketch, it audits all of the branches of government. It audits all of the agencies of government. And we can squeeze wasteful spending out of the government right now and invest that money into things that matter.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Both of you have made one overarching point, and that is that the government is broken. The government is not working the way it was meant to work. We have no leadership in Washington, D.C., from the Republican House, to the Republican Senate, to the Republican White House, that is willing to take on the gigantic task of reforming this government. It is nothing but status quo. It is nothing but the same old tired ideas that get recycled election cycle after election cycle, with no real solutions. Whether you are talking about energy costs, or you are talking about the war in Iraq, or you are talking about Katrina, we have a broken government and nobody in Washington, D.C., with the guts to try to fix it. Now, when you look at our foreign policy, and it has been mentioned already here, $8.8 billion given to Iraqi ministers by the coalition provisional authority and nobody knows where it is; $45 billion of American taxpayer dollars spent in Iraq on reconstruction, $96 million in cash and receipts remain unaccounted for a specific project, on and on and on. Why is it broke? Why is the American government broke? Because we are not having any success in rehabilitating the Iraqi economy. Oil production below pre-war levels, electricity is below pre-war levels, 54 percent of Iraqi households lack access to clean water. On and on and on. But the main line is this, that this country needs to go in a new direction. The American people are tired.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is on Secretary Rumsfeld. He has shown incompetence operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down. That is Paul Eaton, Army Major General's comments. I think, Mr. Delahunt, this all gets back to what has been happening in this country, a refusal, an absolute refusal by this Congress to conduct the kind of oversight that is necessary. Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the founding document that really organized this country, gives the power to this Chamber.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We went to war with a flawed plan that didn't account for the hard work to build the peace after we took down the regime. We also served under a Secretary of Defense who didn't understand leadership, who was abusive, who was arrogant, and who didn't build a strong team. That is not Tim Ryan, that is not Kendrick Meek, that is not Bill Delahunt. That is a retired Army general who had action in the region.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio.--afraid to address the real issues today, that is the basis of incompetence, whether you are in government, whether you are in business, whether you are in coaching. Does not matter what your field is. If you do not admit you make a mistake, then you are going to have problems. If a coach goes into a game with a certain game plan, and at half-time you are down 21 points, then you change the game plan; it has not worked. Move forward, move on, make the changes necessary to move the country forward.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One more time. Read it twice.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it would be an honor for me to watch and listen to you read that with your new glasses.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Americans.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you. Good job.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Point of clarification. This is foreign money.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And corporate welfare.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You are not investing in education where you have millions of students that are now college educated inventing new things, helping us with alternative energy. You have none of that. You are not investing in health care, where kids and parents are healthier and workers are more productive. You get no benefit. You are giving money to China and they are taking the interest and they are reinvesting it back into their state-owned facilities and wiping out the middle class in America.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is the problem we have. Two final points to wrap it up. Let's get back to the sense of the common good, Mr. Delahunt, where everybody benefits and everybody contributes. We should demand as Democrats that every citizen in the country, able-bodied citizen, contributes to the good of the country and the economy. They get educated and everything else. We need to demand that of everybody. But at the same time those people who have benefited from the system, the economic system, the capitalistic system, democracy in the United States of America, all of these people need to contribute. The more you benefit, the more you are obligated to keep the system running. Everybody contributes and everybody benefits. Let's start focusing on the common good instead of all of these special interests. It gets back to this, and this is one of the final points I want to make. Over the past 5 years we have figured out that we, myself personally and my constituents back at home, do not trust the judgment of the Republican leadership in the United States Congress and in the Senate and in the White House. It is not personal. They are good people, but their judgment has been very poor over the past couple of years. And the end result is tuition costs are up 40 percent; gasoline prices up 47 percent; health care costs up 55 percent; median income is down 4 percent; and nothing with the minimum wage, lowering college tuition costs, and all of things that are going to lead, business incubators and downtown revitalization, all the things that this country needs. Let's take this country in a new direction. I am excited about the opportunities we are going to have being in the majority in January. I think it is going to be an exciting time with new ideas and a lot of things that we can accomplish here in the United States.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I wanted to make a point that I was going through a GAO study today, and you can get it on the GAO Web site, and it showed two scenarios. One was what happens if we continue going down the same road we are on and we make President Bush's tax cuts permanent for the top 1 percent of the people, and it plays that scenario out through the numbers; what percentage of our budget we would spend on military and this, that, and the other. And one of the issues there was the interest on the debt. If we keep implementing the Republican proposals that have been going on for the last 5 years for sure, rubber stamped, but much longer than that in the Congress without the check of a Democrat President where they were working together, we will be paying so much money, a higher proportion of our annual revenues to interest on the debt that it will be staggering. The American people will wholly reject that kind of fiscal policy. Because when you are paying interest on the debt, you get no value from that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think the point that we are trying to make here is we know it is not easy to admit you make mistakes. It goes against your human nature. But when you are elevated to leadership positions like we have been blessed to be here and to represent our country, 700,000 people apiece, it takes courage. It does not take courage to have oversight to chase a President's peccadillos around the Oval Office. That is not courageous. Courage is trying to say we have made a colossal mistake, and instead of going down the same road even faster, try to stop, reevaluate the situation and let us find out who we need to hold accountable here, who needs to be brought in before the Congress, as you said. That is not easy. That is difficult. That is one of the most difficult things about being an American, and being an American government is that your warts are here for all the world to see. But that is better than the alternative, which is tyranny and suppression and oppression by the government. This is a part of our process, these problems getting aired out, but at the end of the day, it is part of our greatness because we can quickly then adapt, fix the problem and move on, but when you have leadership that is afraid--

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, the same type of philosophy with the war, refusing to be accountable and to address the major issues and trying to provide a lot of happy talk for the American people, it is the same with the domestic economy. President Bush says America's economy is strong and benefiting all Americans, yet at the same time, as this graph shows, college tuition is up 40 percent, gas prices are up 47 percent, health care costs are up 55 percent, and median household income down 4 percent. But the President is saying the economy is strong and benefiting all Americans. Where are you living? Not in Youngstown, Ohio; not in Niles, Ohio. Give me a break. The challenges that the average American person faces today are enormous. The challenges are enormous, and we need to get this country out of this rut we are stuck in and move in a new direction. Let us talk about broadband access for every American, let us talk about fixing the health care crisis in the United States of America so small businesses don't have to pay as much for health care costs. They could reinvest it back into their company and maybe we could shrink the trade deficit just a bit. We have an economy right now that is very competitive, competing with 1.3 billion citizens in China and 1 billion citizens in India. And they are focused on engineering and science and all of these other issues, yet we are making it more difficult and more costly to go to school. The number of people that have student loans now is going up and up and up, and the amount that they owe back is going up and up and up. I think the stat we used the other night, Mr. Delahunt, was that 8 percent of the people who have student loans owe $40,000 a year or more, up from like 1.5 percent 10 years prior to. We can't make it more expensive, Mr. Meek. We need to make it more accessible. And I would be happy to yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentlewoman. This is not about playing gotcha. This is not about saying hey, look, this, this, and that. This is about fixing the problems. We need the information that these generals on the ground will provide us so we can actually fix the problems. And we are going to reach across the aisle and work with the Republicans. This is not about Democrat or Republican. This is about the United States of America. We need everybody's ideas, we need everybody's intellect, and we need all Americans to participate in this. These are complex problems. There is no liberal or conservative answer. We are in a new realm. We are well beyond anything we could have ever fathomed with the technology, the innovation, the movement of the economy, globalization, techniques, and the whole nine yards. We are past all the old slogans: Lesser government and big government. We are past that. We are so far beyond that. But the leadership in the country needs to reflect the views of the United States of America and its citizens.