Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And growing.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You can say that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. No doubt about it, of all the Social Security meetings that I have had, not one citizen in my district has stood up and said anything to the effect of let us take a close look at these private accounts. Young people included have been coming. I have three universities in my district, and even the young students still recognize it. We get kind of cynical maybe every now and again up here and think that somehow that spin and manipulation somehow will always work; and the facts maybe do not always get out, but I find it very heartening that the President can go out and try to sell a proposal and poll after poll after poll continues to show him losing support on this. I think it is very heartening to know that the American people pay very close attention to these issues especially when they affect their pocketbook like Social Security does, and they look closely at what the President is talking about, and yet they still disagree with what the President is saying. It is very good, and I think that the key factor is that the President's proposal weakens Social Security. It does not strengthen it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Bingo.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And we see where the Russians and Mr. Putin are beginning to crack down on a lot of the democratic movements, taking over a lot of the media, and when a guy like Mr. Yushchenko comes here from the Ukraine, with the scars to prove his fight for democracy, and he stands in front of this Chamber to address our constitutional body that we have, what kind of example is this to send? Yet in the same breath talk about freedom, talk about opportunity. Members would think that as either a legislator or executive, you would want to hear what the dissent is so if you were right, then you would be able to address the issue and explain why you are right. I think why we see the President's numbers going down, he is speechifying. It is not a give and take at town hall meetings. He is kicking people out if they have an anti-Bush bumper sticker on their car, and pretending like they are the Secret Service. And that is reported. It happened out in Denver, and they are investigating it now. Answer the concerns of the country, and we will see progress as you begin to advocate and argue for your side. Funny, the gentlewoman would say that on her flight in from Florida she crunched some numbers, and my flight from Ohio is only an hour, from Cleveland; but I was able to work some numbers, too. We have mentioned here before that if we implement the President's proposal of diverting money into the private accounts, there will be a $5 trillion hole in our budget. Somehow we have to plug the hole. We are going to have to borrow the money and pay interest in order to fund the private accounts. I did some math trying to figure out what $5 trillion could do for other programs. And since this is the 30-something Hour, I wanted to focus on Pell grants and we were able to get it printed off the cocktail napkin that comes with the Diet Coke and the peanuts on the plane. For Pell Grants, $5 trillion over 20 years could raise the maximum Pell Grant from $4,050 to $59,500. Right now 5.3 million students get the $4,000 maximum, but with the $5 trillion we could have 23.7 million students receive $59,500 worth of college grants to go to schools. Mr. Speaker, $60,000 would take care of undergrad, masters, and Ph.D. It would get students educated. Many people do not need $60,000 for just a bachelor's degree, so we could cut it in half and give $30,000 to 47 million students. This is just to illustrate a point. Just think if we plug a hole in a risky ponzi scheme that we are going to have. But imagine if we made this significant investment in education. Imagine the value that would be created from that. We did a study in Ohio, and for every dollar the State of Ohio spent on higher ed, the State of Ohio would get $2 back in tax money. Imagine what the return on this investment would be. It would be significant. We would have educated, well-rounded citizens participating in democracy, more tolerant, more creative, creating wealth in our society. What kinds of investments are we making otherwise? We are going to borrow and plug a hole with $5 trillion. What value do we get from that? We are losing jobs left and right, and the biggest crisis is a problem that is in 2041 when we are 70 years old.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If my wife says it is okay.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, that is what this is about. When the country goes in the wrong direction, the population, the population can shift it and move it in the right direction. That is what is happening here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, from where I come from, that is a moral issue. That is a moral issue. What do we do with those people who need the help, who access or utilize this program as an insurance program when they lose a spouse at a young age and they have kids, they have survivors, which is a third of the program. That is a moral issue, and we talk a lot about morality, and it has been so narrow and focused on just a couple of issues. Are we going to say as a country you are on your own again and roll it back to before we implemented the Social Security program? It has been successful. It works, and there are a lot of people out there who have benefited. This was an issue at one of my town hall meetings. There were three or four who came, and it was strictly based on survivorship, disability, and people who have just had a lot of bad luck. We try to pin labels and say this certain segment is lazy, they do not want to work, they want the easy way out. There is a lot of people trying to make their way out working very, very hard. And for one reason or another, they are sick and make a couple of bad decisions. It is amazing. The more I get out and hear these stories, how many people, one car accident, one sick family member, one death in the family, and the whole thing collapses. This program has been there to say to those folks we are here for you and the government is going to be here, society is going to be here to help you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A joint hearing with the Committee on International Relations and the Committee on Armed Services. I appreciate the gentleman's correcting me.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, I appreciate the gentleman sharing that information. The real question is, we have to agree on this, and it is not a Democrat or Republican thing. This baby that is born with a $26,000 debt on their head, we do not know if that baby is a Democrat or a Republican. We have an obligation here for the next generation. And for many, many, many years our colleagues were standing in the well on that side talking about a balanced budget amendment, talking about fiscal discipline, talking about tax and spend. Now we are borrowing and spending. This is worse. It is bad to tax and spend, and I do not think any of us advocate that. But to borrow and spend, because you are borrowing, you are spending and then you are paying interest on the money that you borrow, primarily from the Japanese and the Chinese banks. That is reckless. It is bad foreign policy, it is bad domestic policy, it is not conducive to providing opportunity for the next generation, your kids and the young kids that are coming up. When you talk about funding health care, Medicare, Medicaid, education, tuition costs, Pell grants, No Child Left Behind, how are we going to compete with 1.3 billion Chinese, how are we going to compete with over 1 billion Indians in the next couple of decades, when we have kids, students, that are unhealthy and not getting the proper education that they need, and at the same time we are leaving this kind of burden on their backs? Now, I have to excuse myself. I have a meeting I have to be at 3 minutes ago. But I want the gentleman to carry on here because this is important. I think the best thing we can do in our 30-something Caucus and our 30-something Working Group that our leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), has helped us establish, is talk about this, because if there is one thing I hope that I can say in my tenure in Congress and the gentleman's is that somehow we were able to fix this and make the kind of investments that the young students need and that they deserve and that will lead to the kind of opportunity that the gentleman and I have had.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I think he makes a great point, and I think the phrase that he has used in the past that is applicable to the Social Security debate is the ``Potomac two-step.'' They want us looking at Social Security over here and having this debate and flying around the country and talking about what needs fixing and a crisis that really does not exist, and we have numbers that say it does not exist, but we still want to have this debate over here. Meanwhile, on this end, we are cutting Medicaid. Health care costs have gone up 50 percent over the last 5 years; education costs of college tuition up 36 percent. No one wants to talk about these issues. No one wants to talk about the fact that Youngstown city schools, the district that I represent, 85 percent of the kids who go to that school qualify for free and reduced lunch. We do not want to have that debate. We want to have a manufactured debate. And I think the gentleman is exactly right. That is exactly what is happening here, and I think it becomes more and more important on us to fight this on a couple of different fronts. One is to make the argument that Social Security is solid up until 2041 and that we need to make some corrections maybe on a bipartisan way but make sure that the benefits are guaranteed, make sure that no American is going to get a reduction in their benefits, especially the 50 percent of the people who qualify for Social Security, in which Social Security lifts them out of poverty. So I think it is very important for us to broaden this debate over here and not just talk about Social Security but to talk about all these other issues. One of the issues that I have been working on with Members of the other side, trying to somehow get the attention of the administration, is the issue of China, manipulating their currency up to 40 percent. We had a hearing today in the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield further, exactly. When you add on it the $26,000 that you are born with that is going to keep accumulating every day, especially when we are running $500 billion annual deficits, and you add on to that, just picture the baby born today, and this clock ticking, 18 to 22 years out, say 22 years out, that number keeps going up and up and up, and maybe next week we will have the math and figure out what it will be based on inflation. And then add on to that college costs rising at the rate they have been over the past 4 years. I know in Ohio alone they have doubled, and I think average college students graduates with a $20,000-some debt, and that is not even if they go after a masters or Ph.D. or law degree. It is about $22,000 for the average college student's debt. So you take the 26, you add on the 22, now you are talking close to $50,000; and then project that out 22 years. So your baby born today, if you want them to go to college or get a masters degree or law degree or Ph.D., you are talking at least $100,000, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. That is not providing opportunity. At the same time, they are competing with billions, over 1 billion Chinese workers and over 1 billion Indians. So this is becoming very dangerous for the long-term prospects of our country. If you want to e-mail us, 30something democrats @mail.house.gov. 30something democrats@mail.house.gov. I have enjoyed this. I look forward to us coming back next week. I hope this in some way has broadened the discussion and deepened the discussion on the issues facing the country. I yield back to my very good friend from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. These are today's numbers. And this clock is ticking by the second. But $7.7 trillion is the national debt today and ticking. Maybe we will be able to get the technology here where this will keep moving, $7.79 trillion national debt today. And I think this is the most staggering number. Someone sitting at home watching this or sitting up in the gallery, their individual share of the national debt is $26,300. So if one is born today, welcome to being born in the United States of America, they have a $26,000 tag on their head.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Unbelievable.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would further yield, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right. Maybe one day I will even be his constituent, that one day I will move to Florida. But I think the point that the gentleman from Florida brought up is the issue of the perennial budget deficits that we are having it seems every year in this Chamber, $400 to $500 billion a year, and I think when we talk in the 30-something group that we have established here, the reason we like to talk about and highlight the deficit is because long term that is going to have the most detrimental effect on members of the 30-something generation, 20-something, teenagers, born today. We have huge numbers. Our debt is rising. Our deficit is going up and up and up every single year. And now to implement the Social Security plan, $5 trillion to implement the President's version of his privatization, $5 trillion over the next 20 years. We already have almost an $8 trillion national debt. Let me move this over.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Constructive criticism. I appreciate that. We had a discussion about the Europeans wanting to lift the arms embargo on China, which has been the Europeans cannot sell all these different types of military arms to the Chinese. The ban has been on since Tiananmen Square in 1989. Now the Europeans are saying we want to sell to the Chinese. So here we have this huge country that is growing at a rapid rate, and now we have even some of our allies wanting to sell arms to a rapidly growing Chinese government.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I would like to also take this opportunity to thank the gentleman from New York for having this Special Order. I grew up going to Catholic school, 12 years of Catholic school at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grade School and John F. Kennedy High School, and I received my first holy communion under this Pope. I was confirmed under this Pope, and I was married under this Pope. And for those of us who are involved in the political system, not only here but around the world, one of the things we tend to notice is that in many ways international figures are inconsistent. And I think as we celebrate the life of this great Pope and this great statesman, I think it is important for us to recognize his consistency and how he was consistent with all of his philosophies through the Church and through his life. And whether one always agreed with this Pope or not, regardless of the political pressure that was being put from certain quarters in certain interest groups on certain countries, the Pope was always very consistent. He was prolife on abortion. He was prolife on the death penalty. He understood that we honor not only the Holy Church, but God and the rest of us through our actions, and this Pope, through his actions, and what he advocated for, always for the poor, always for the disenfranchised, always for the workers, always for those people who did not have a voice, this Pope did not have to worry about the political implications, and he acted out of a position of love, and he did not always do it when it was just convenient for him or for the Church. And that is very important. When the war in Iraq came before this Chamber and came before the international community, it was this Pope who took a firm position. And, interestingly enough, throughout the war it was this Pope who was one of the only international leaders we would hear talk about the innocent civilians who were getting killed throughout the war in Iraq. And whether or not the war was justified is a debate for this Chamber, but I think it is important for us to recognize that this Pope understood that those innocent lives were God's children, too, and the Pope made sure that the conscience of the world paid attention to that. One or two final points about the example of this Pope. A lot of religious issues and a lot of religious connotations have been made over the past few years and have made their way to the forefront of our political discourse here. And I think this Pope has taught us through his life on how we have to understand and utilize a religion consistently and the philosophies consistently. But on the issues of Christianity, the issues of nonjudgment, which is the highest ideal of the Christian faith, not to judge, and for this Pope to go to the mosque, to go to the synagogue, to disagree with one on issues of the day, but yet never judge one personally or never judge one's country personally is a lesson for all of us. The man who spoke for the poor, the man who spoke for the disenfranchised, the man who spoke for the workers, and the man who taught my generation of service, and in the Catholic schools and in the Catholic Church one of the great doctrines is that we have a responsibility regardless of what we are doing to make money or to protect one's family or to help one's family survive, we have an obligation in some capacity to serve others. And this Pope in many ways served all of us with his intellect, with his knowledge, with his commitment, with his example of nonjudgment and tolerance. We have a lot that we can digest that this Pope has shown us, and I hope that those of us in this body and around the world will use this celebration as an opportunity to get to know this Pope in a better way and a deeper way and hopefully implement his example in the day-to-day workings of this Chamber. I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding to me.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the only answer I can come up with is the pharmaceutical companies did not want it. It is amazing because we have obviously signed numerous free trade agreements with every country. In my area we have been devastated by a lot of the agreements. All of a sudden we say if we are going to free trade everything else, let us free trade pharmaceuticals. As long as they have good safety standards, let us let them come in from Canada and drop the price down. But the kibosh was put on that. When we look at the pharmaceutical industry had three or four lobbyists for every Member of Congress and donated $100 million to Congress over the course of that period when we were negotiating that drug bill, the money comes in here. The pharmaceutical industry did not want that. So they got what they wanted. They got that language removed or not put in. So now the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not allowed to negotiate. Not only are we not allowed to bring drugs in from Canada, but the Secretary of HHS is not allowed to sit down with Pfizer and say Pfizer, Merck, if you want the Medicare drug contract for X drug, and of course they do, so you say we are going to talk price, just like any other business would do.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And to not do anything about cost for the prescriptions I think illustrates and speaks to the point better than anything else that too much money drives what is going on down here. They are not worried about Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Goldstein. Sometimes the decisions here are about who raises us a lot of money. Mr. Speaker, who would pass a $500 billion prescription drug bill that is now $700 billion, $800 billion, $900 billion, we do not even know what the real number is, and not do anything about trying to control the price of prescription drugs, and then turn around and come in and say drugs are not the issue, cost is not the issue, Social Security is the biggest crisis in the country now? Let us not forget as we begin to start wrapping things up, we gave this administration a lot of leeway, a lot of rope with the war, with the prescription drug bill and the war that the taxpayers would not have to pay anything more than $50 billion because we would use the oil money for reconstruction and be greeted as liberators. We are going to be in and out, and all of the things we heard before the war turned out not to be true.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The fix there to save Medicare solvency was to spend an additional 500 to $600 billion, not to do anything with the cost of prescription drugs, not to allow for reimportation, not to allow the Secretary of HHS to negotiate down the drug prices with some of these drug companies. The gentlewoman is exactly right. When I think of a crisis going on in my district right now, many of the school districts that I represent, half the kids live in poverty. That is a crisis because those kids are going to be taking from the system instead of creating wealth and paying taxes and contributing to the system. That is a crisis. In Mahoney County, which encompasses the city of Youngstown, there are thousands of kids who have lead poisoning. There are 2,000 kids, young kids who have lead poisoning in Mahoney County at a level by which it actually affects their cognitive ability which puts you on a level of slight retardation. It is unbelievable. Those are the crises we have in the country: health, education, making sure that the poorest among us have some kind of security. If Members went to Youngstown, Ohio, and tried to convince the residents there that the biggest crisis in the country starts in 2042, they would laugh at you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Social Security, exactly, instead of having the up and down. And that is the kind of risk you are going to have to take on if you are going to put your money into some of these private accounts. One point more before I pull up another slide here. Your share of the national debt is $26,000, and I think we really need to start looking in terms like this, because not only do business people always worry about what the next quarter's earnings are going to be, what is the next quarter's profits going to be, and we tend to always think what is the next election going to be like, because we get elected every 2 years, so there is no real long-term thinking. So I think it is important for us, especially during the discussions the 30-something group has, is to have this broad discussion: What does this look like to a baby born today and you add this on? Then we have got the number here that the average college student has $20,000 of debt after going to college; plus a credit card debt, plus a car payment. So what we are trying to say here is that a baby born today has a tax on their head of at least, at least, and that is today, if the clock does not run, of at least $50,000 by the time they are 22 years old and graduating. Mr. Speaker, you add in inflation and the fact college tuition is doubling, add in all of the other factors, and the bankruptcy bill, which I will not go into, we are not serving our country well and we are not serving the next generation well when we do this. I think we are being very shortsighted and selfish. It sounds good; we are going to borrow money. Wall Street is going to make a killing on the whole deal. It sounds good, and sometimes if it sounds too good to be true, most often it is.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I have a slight cold so please forgive me, but we are back with the 30-something Hour, and I will be joined by my two colleagues from Florida here in a few minutes. We want to continue this debate that we have been having in the United States over the past several months, a debate that the President has initiated in saying after the campaign that he wanted to have a national discussion in regards to the issue of Social Security and the Social Security solvency and where Social Security is going to be in the next few years and the kind of changes that we have to make in the country in order to deal with it. Those of us on this side, and I think many on the other side, have very many concerns about this because Social Security, quite frankly, has been one of the most successfully administered Federal Government programs in the history of the United States of America. We have talked over the past few months on how Social Security runs with only a 1 percent administrative cost. So there are a lot of government programs I think we all agree in this Chamber and across the country that are inefficient, that are ineffective, that maybe do not work, that maybe take too much money without getting the kind of results that we ultimately want. Social Security is not one of those programs. Social Security has been an enormous success, and I think what is great really about Social Security in trying to advance this argument, I think why the President is having so much difficulty is that Social Security is a program that touches all of our lives. We here in the 30-something Caucus watched our grandparents receive Social Security, and the story of my great-grandfather when Social Security was first implemented, he could not believe when he got to America that he could retire and walk down to the end of the driveway and get his Social Security check and he would have dignity in his final years. This program has been successful, and the President is having great difficulty making an argument that we need to somehow radically change the Social Security system. The President's proposal is to say that those of us who are in our 20s and 30s and 40s, instead of putting our percent, our 6.2 percent into the Social Security system, will be allowed to divert a certain portion of that over into some private annuity or private account that we would be allowed to set up, and there are all kinds of math involved in this in the President's proposal that lead to someone who does put money into a private account to not receive the kind of benefits that they thought they were going to get in the first place. But the main point is this: the Social Security system, the Social Security program may need change, may need to be tweaked, but it does not need to be privatized, and the President's plan does not fix the problem. It in no way, shape, or form fixes the long-term solvency issues that Social Security has, and there are many other ways we can go about fixing this program. It is good until 2042, into 2050 and even after that you will still get 80 percent of your benefits if we do absolutely nothing. So there is no need to get crazy. There is no need to get crazy and try to make some radical changes to this program like privatizing it and somehow jeopardize and slash benefits for our seniors and our grandparents and our parents. I am joined by the gentlewoman who has been on all the talk shows over the past few weeks and did a fantastic job. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.