Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Do it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. When you think about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trailers sitting in the gulf coast that never got used for Katrina, when you think about all the wasted, unbid contracts through FEMA, to Halliburton, and in the war, I mean, hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars. Then all of a sudden we find that we have these regulatory issues, this is security, this is economic security. This is family security, when you hear Democrats talking about securing the country, it doesn't mean we want to start a war, it means we want to protect the homeland, and border security, family security, food safety, toy safety, product safety, these are things that it is our responsibility, as Members of Congress, to take care of. You have people sitting in towns and cities and counties all over the United States that are very, very concerned with this issue. To have a person who is in charge of these kinds of things say we only have one person who is in charge of toy inspection, and we don't need any more money to do it is a complete dereliction of duty, of our responsibility here. When you look at what we are trying to do at every single turn, from raising the minimum wage to reducing college costs, to ensuring product safety, to ensuring food safety, this is about economic security. This is about homeland security. You know, 50,000 new cops on the beat, first responder funding. I mean, these are all things that we have been pushing and our friends, many of them on the other side, are obstructing this from getting done.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. How about the President the other day? This drove me crazy. He says, Congress is wasting their time with all these hearings. It ceases to amaze me anymore that we try to pass children's health care, and the President says, well, they can go to the emergency room. We are trying to have oversight so that we can have real product safety, safeguards up for food, and you are having all these hearings. We are trying to oversee what's going on in Iraq so we can, A, fix the problems we are having, but, B, finding all of these billions of dollars that have been going to these nonbid contracts and the jobs are not actually getting done. Then he said, oh, you are having all these hearings. Then he said today, about the SCHIP bill, I don't know if you heard this, but he said, Congress is trying to pass this health care bill for kids, but it's really a trick. He said it was a trick. This is not a trick. This is us trying to pass health care for kids. He thinks it is somehow cute to say that on Halloween that this is somehow a trick.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We should have a hearing on that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if I can intervene here, I mean, you look at the money that we're borrowing and then we're giving tax cuts. So it's not that we have the money laying around here and say, boy, we've got a lot of money laying around here, why don't we just give the wealthiest people in our country the money back. We're actually going out to China and OPEC countries and borrowing the money to give tax cuts, and then we borrow the money from OPEC countries to fund the war to get oil from the Middle East. This is the most convoluted scenario that you almost think you've got to read a Tom Clancy novel to drum it up. And then when you look at the priorities that aren't getting funded here that we're now trying to fund, and on the House floor today we had the minority leader, we had the minority whip, we had all the leadership of the Republican Party tell us how somehow funding education, lowering tuition costs, reducing the amount of student debt that our students are going to have to incur, funding community health clinics is somehow not an important priority, that somehow if we put all these bills together with the defense bill and the veterans bill and education bill and health bill, that somehow those aren't all American priorities, that somehow when these vets get back, that because all these bills are somehow put together in a process that's going to speed this whole thing up, that somehow when those vets get back, they don't need health care, their kids don't need health care. Somehow when the vets get back that they don't need education, they don't need increased Pell Grants to send their kids to school. Am I missing something here? Like these vets are out fighting for our freedom here, just for a defense bill, or just for a vets bill, that they're somehow not fighting for some of these basic, fundamental American values that we have. And look what's going on back at the ranch when our friends are playing around with the budget, not wanting to pass legislation, passing tax cuts for the top 1 percent, look at the hole we've gotten into. Now, this is something that is very important to me, and I remember a few weeks ago I was at my brother's house who has two young kids, Dominic and Nicky. One's 1 and one's 2. And my sister-in-law said it's scary about these toys. I remember her saying that. Here's from 2001, and it goes up as the years come, the amount of imported toys coming from China. Okay. Over here, the yellow line that drops off, that is the number of Consumer Product Safety Commission employees going down. So we only have 400. As the number of imports from China and toys come into our country goes up, the Bush administration has reduced the number of Consumer Product Safety employees to actually monitor these toys. Same thing's going on with food. So when you look at these mixed priorities, you know, sometimes we think, well, the war's going on in a far-off place or it doesn't affect me. If you've got kids and you've got toys, this irresponsible behavior that we saw in Katrina, we saw with the government contracts in Iraq, comes right into your household because of a lack of investment into the United States.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We haven't borrowed money to make sure that we can hire enough people in the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make sure our toys are safe coming in from China. We're borrowing money to give the top percent a tax break, people making millions and millions and millions of dollars a year, and hey, if you make millions, God bless you, but now we're in a position where we don't have enough employees to monitor the toys coming into the country and we're giving multimillionaires a tax break. We're borrowing the money from China, which is pretty interesting when you think about all these toys coming in from China, that we're borrowing the money to fund the war and the tax breaks from China. So China's now our bank. So now they, of course, want their products coming into the country. So, now all of the sudden, things like the reduction in employees at the Consumer Product Safety Commission happens because the Republican House and Senate and the White House have got us so dependent. You mind if I go through here? I don't even know what these toys are. I see them on my brother and sister-in-law's floor. You'll know soon. You're newly wed. The football bobblehead cake decoration. Okay. These are toys that have been recalled due to lead. This has a Patriots bobblehead.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Can I make a point too? And I want to say this because we all have a lot of good friends who are on the other side who have voted for the Labor-Health-Education appropriations bill, voted for defense, voted for the vets; and the argument being made today was that somehow this was unique that we are putting several appropriations bills together. If you ask people in our districts, the whole process is foreign to them anyway. It's just get the job done. And when we look back at our Republicans friends, Mr. Speaker, when they were in charge, on 59 different occasions, had put bills together like we're trying to do. And so I think it's important. We are trying to get the job done. But this is not every Republican. This is, in my estimation, some very fringe, extreme members of the Republican Party who are basically backing the President on these things, and he has just enough Members on the Republican side to sustain a veto.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman and appreciate the opportunity to make a few remarks here. Madam Speaker, a lot has been said here. The minority leader came down and said this makes him sick. Another speaker came down and said we are somehow holding the troops hostage. Another Member comes down and says this is a sad day. You know, I think all that rhetoric may be nice, but what we are trying to do here is run the government. As has been stated several times, when the Republicans were in charge, they put bills together and got them passed. And now all of a sudden to take a stand here like this has never happened is, I think, a tad bit disingenuous. But we have to ask ourselves now that everyone is bringing the troops in here: What are the troops fighting for? They are not fighting for a Defense bill. They are not fighting for a VA bill. They are fighting for our country. And what is our country? Our country is a country that makes investments in its own people. They are fighting for America because it's a great place to live. It's a great place to get educated. It's a great place to get health care. And for us to say somehow they are just fighting for only a portion of our society, I think is a bit disingenuous, too. I bet if we talked to some of the troops and we asked them what it means to be an American, they would say it means to be free and to be able to achieve the American Dream. And you achieve the American Dream by being healthy, by being educated, by having access to this great country. That is what we are trying to do here. We have a great bill. This Labor-HHS bill is great. It is called the people's bill. Just like the VA bill is the people's bill. This all goes together. This is one cohesive investment that we need to make in our country; and we are asking the Republicans, Madam Speaker, to join us. You can't hide behind the President. Article I, section 1 creates this body. We are the ones who fund the government. If the President wants to veto this, help us override the veto. These are all good bills. And when those veterans get home, as Mr. Obey stated, they need the same exact kind of attention and their families need the same exact kind of attention that every other citizen gets. They want high quality, low-cost education. They want high quality, low cost health care, and they want an opportunity for their kids to live the American Dream. Is that too much to ask? That's the question: Is that too much to ask?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is important, too, to recognize we are just beginning. I think we have moved into a new direction. We are clearly not done. We are clearly not close to being done. No one here is satisfied. No one here will say, This is great; we have really accomplished everything we wanted to. We can go out and turn out the lights and let someone else finish the business. We have got a lot more to do, if you look at what we want to do with alternative energy, if you look at what we want to do as far as continuing to try to reduce the cost of education, K-12 and whatnot.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We're still struggling. There are a lot of emotional issues that Cleveland Indians fans have had for a long time. And then you factor in the Cleveland Browns and the drive and the fumble and Michael Jordan singlehandedly beating us a couple of times in the playoffs and you add this to the mix, we have some psychological issues we need to deal with, Mr. Speaker, and hopefully we will be able to work through them. But today is the day that we are talking about the excess in spending on the war. We hear a lot back in our districts, I'm sure you do in the Seventeenth District in Miami, and I hear in the Seventeenth District of Ohio, we hear about the rising cost of health care. We hear about the rising cost of education. We hear the problems that we have incurred in this country because we haven't invested into developing alternative energy sources in the United States of America, and we haven't developed them fast enough. We have all these issues that local communities deal with, Community Development Block Grant money that they get from the Federal Government that local communities can build sidewalks and roads and sewer lines and they can use all this money. That is Federal money that works its way down to local communities. And when we look at the needs of local communities, every single day in the paper in Ohio, it is water lines, it is sewer lines. In the summer it is what sports do we have to ask the kids and the parents to pay for this year? Why are we cutting the art programs? Why don't we have enough money to handle the septic and the sewer systems in our local community? For years, the Federal Government continued to make those investments. And what we hear now coming out of the executive branch, Mr. Meek, is that we don't have the money to do it. Now, we are talking about providing health care for 10 million kids, poor kids, who live within 200 percent of poverty, a family of four making maybe $40,000 a year. What we are arguing on our side is that we think it is in the best interests of this country, all of us together, not one family or this family, all of us, is that if we provide and pay for health care for these 10 million kids and their families, because we believe on this side and our friends on the other side who voted with us, not the President, we believe that if we make this very small investment of $35 billion over 5 years, that we are going to have a healthier country, that we are going to have kids who aren't sitting in the classroom getting other children sick, that they are going to be able to concentrate and focus. We sit here and we say, ``We need more people to major in math. We need more people to major in science. We need to compete with the Chinese. They graduated thousands and thousands of more engineers than we did in the United States of America.'' Part of that is we need our kids to be healthy. We need them to be able to concentrate in school, not sneezing and getting colds and pneumonia and not missing classes. We need them to be healthy. And that is the basic concept behind the State Children's Health Insurance Program. To have the President, after he began a war that is going to cost us $2.4 trillion, with a T, tell us that we don't have enough money to provide health care for these 10 million kids is a complete outrage and doesn't really make any sense. Now, I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, for the Congress to know and to be reminded that over the past 6 years, with a Republican President, a Republican House and a Republican Senate, that this President and that Congress, those Congresses have borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President and Congress before them combined. Over $1 trillion in foreign money. Now, the same Congress and the same President asked to raise the debt limit, meaning we can go out and borrow, as a country, more money, five times he asked to raise the debt limit. Then, on top of that, the final number is the increase of the debt under this President is $3 trillion. So he raised the debt by $3 trillion, raised the debt limit five times. Now we have a war that is going to cost us $2.4 trillion, with a T, and he says, ``We don't have enough money, Mr. Speaker, to provide health care for 10 million kids at $35 billion, with a B, over 5 years.'' For 40 days in Iraq, we could pay for 10 million kids to get health care for a whole year. Forty days in Iraq. And what is the investment going to get us? It is going to get us healthier kids. It is going to get us kids who can concentrate and pay attention in school. It is going to save us money in the long run because we are not going to cart these kids off to the emergency room 2 weeks later with pneumonia when we could have taken care of them with maybe a small prescription. Those are the kind of prudent investments that we want to make in this country. Those are the kind of investments that we should be making in this country. We talk a lot in this country about what are we going to do in the next century? We lost manufacturing, and we are not sure what the new economy is going to look like. But there are some things we know about, Mr. Speaker. We know that our kids in Niles, Ohio, or Youngstown, Ohio, or, Miami, Florida or wherever you are from, are competing more directly with the students in China. We know that our kids are now competing. The old steel belt and the old rust belt in Ohio is Cleveland and Youngstown and Akron and Pittsburgh. For the longest time, those cities used to compete with each other and those businesses used to compete with each other. Now this whole region is competing with Shanghai. And our kids are competing more directly with those kids in China, India and all over the world, 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion people in India. We only have 300 million people in the United States of America. We are at a real disadvantage when it comes to just mass numbers. And democracy is not always easy, either. If you want to open up a factory in China or you just clear a neighborhood out, you give everybody 25 bucks, they give you a week to get out. There are no environmental laws. There are no worker rights. It just happens. The government comes in and moves everything along. Democracy is sometimes a little more difficult, in a good way. We have rights; property rights, human rights and all kinds of different things that citizens in China don't have. But my point here is this, we only have 300 million people. So if you look at what the Democratic agenda, the 6 in '06 and what my friend from Florida has been stating, what we have been trying to do is very, very simple. We're trying to invest into those 300 million people so that they're healthier, so that they're more educated, so that they are able to live the American dream. Now, no one here is saying that everyone needs to be a winner. We understand that life is life. There are winners and there are losers. But as a country, we want to make these investments because we all benefit from it. We all benefit from that. The investments we are making now, just look at our agenda now. One of the first things we did, we raised the minimum wage for the first time since 1997 so that we are lifting people up. One of the second things we did is we reduced the cost of college education, or tried to. We cut student loan interest rates in half. So when you go out and borrow for your kids to go to school or a student borrows next year to go to school, the interest rate will be 3.4 percent, as opposed to last year when it was 6.8 percent and that money was going to the banks. They were making a heck of a lot of money off of it. Mr. Speaker, we are saying keep those rates low; let's improve access so that everyone can go to a community college and get a skill or they can go off to college and get an associate's degree or a master's degree or Ph.D. so that they are educated to compete. What we also did was increased the Pell Grant by $1,000 over the course of the next 5 years. Is that as much as we want? No. Absolutely not. We are not even close. But we are moving in that direction. It's tough, when you have a war that is costing you $2.4 trillion, to come up with any money to make these kinds of investments. But that is what we wanted to do, and we have changed the direction in regard to college education. Now, if you're a kid going to school in Ohio, where we had the new Governor come in and he froze college tuition for 2 years so there will be a zero increase next year and a zero percent increase the following year, if you add that to what we have done with the student loans and the Pell Grants, you're talking about saving average families thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. An average student loan, because of the interest change we made, an average family will save $4,400 over the course of the loan. Now, we are not coming out here beating a drum, saying we have got to cut taxes, we have got to cut taxes for millionaires. We are saying if you send your kid to school and you take out a loan, we just saved you $4,400. If you have someone in your family, or one of your students, kids that are going to school that are working for minimum wage, they got a pay increase. If you're utilizing the Pell Grant, you're going to get more of that. These are good, solid investments we've made. In addition to this, we have the State Children's Health Insurance Program. So these kids have opportunity. Now one of the other things that really isn't on the agenda to talk about, but the Senate just passed it last night, we are trying to pass it again through the conference committee and hopefully get the President to sign it, but the President said he was going to veto it, is the Health and Education bill, where we are making investments to build community health clinics so that people who don't have health insurance now can at least go to a health care clinic and get some preventive care. Mr. Speaker, I just found it stunning, and I think a lot of other citizens of this country did as well, and I know many Members of Congress have found it stunning too, when we were having this big debate about children's health and the President said, Well, they have health insurance. They can go to the emergency room. I found that absolutely stunning that the President of the United States, in 2007, his solution or lack of solution is to say that these kids could just go to the emergency room. Now, I am sorry, but that is unacceptable. Not only is it bad economics, it is unacceptable from a moral position. It has been frustrating, but I want the American people, Mr. Speaker, to understand what we have done through the House is passed legislation. And my friend with the great reform of the Small Business Administration, our friend from Pennsylvania, creating an angel investor fund and basically retooling the SBA for the 21st century in a high-tech economy, the things that we have done have been investments into our country and into our people. Now, I'm sorry. Giving $100,000 tax break to someone who makes millions of dollars a year is not benefiting anybody because they are not even taking that money and investing it back into our country. They are investing it probably in China and India. What we are saying is we are going to make these investments.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay respect and tribute to former Rep. Charles Vanik of Ohio, who died Wednesday August 31 at his home in Jupiter, Florida at age 94. Looking back at the career and mission of Representative Vanik, it is an utterly refreshing example of a legislator who didn't let politics get in the way of his goals and vision for his constituents and people all over the world. Many of my colleagues have already mentioned the historic Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Reform Act of 1974. This critical human rights legislation was the mark on the map for Charles Vanik with regards to those outside the state of Ohio, but for us Ohioans, we know Congressman Vanik as a lifelong stalwart for all of those who are socially and economically oppressed. Charles Vanik led a life of complete selflessness. After receiving his law degree he was on the City Council and in the Ohio legislature where he was valued for his consistent effort and achievements. He then joined the Navy during World War II. After his time in the service, Charles Vanik became a municipal judge until 1954 when he first ran for Congress. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee with jurisdiction over tax law, Congressman Vanik was known for his fights against big business tax breaks in the halls and corridors of Congress as he was known for his signature bow ties. Congressman Vanik served honorably and long as a dedicated public servant. Mr. Vanik, who had rarely spent little more than $3,000 for any of his re-election bids, became increasingly discouraged with the changing political world and the need to siphon time and resources away from addressing the concerns of his constituents. He chose not to run for re-election in 1980. Charles Vanik's life and his commitment to principle are truly remarkable. I believe one of the most important things we should learn from the actions and words of Charles Vanik is to constantly hold ourselves to the highest possible standards, no matter what the political environment or what criticism you might face. The United States Congress and the state of Ohio will miss one of its greatest public officials, Congressman Charles Vanik.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We joke around about baseball and Cleveland, Mr. Speaker. The Cleveland Indians are doing great, but Cleveland is the poorest city in the entire country. There are a lot of kids in that city who would, hopefully, be eligible for this program and be able to take advantage of it. The same in Pittsburgh and Miami and cities in Florida and certainly Boston. So this is important stuff that we need to deal with and, hopefully, we have been able to persuade a few votes.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, the one thing that is important too, I mean, a lot of people would say that, you know, well, my kid has insurance and we're fine and everything else. You know, but if your kid's sitting in a classroom with a kid who is sick that does not have health care because they don't qualify for Medicaid, they're going to get your kid sick. And I think this kind of ties the whole argument together that we are in this together. You know, we have to make very sound, prudent, targeted investments in certain areas that are going to yield a lot of benefits. These are the same kids we're asking to go off to college and get a degree in math and science. But if at a young age these kids don't have health care, where they can, if they get sick, have something, and I find it completely outrageous that in 2007 we would have a President of the United States say, go to the emergency room, or these kids can go to the emergency room. I mean, that's just ridiculous. That's just ridiculous. You don't have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out that it's going to cost everyone a lot more money if this kid that has a cold ends up two weeks later in the emergency room with pneumonia or something worse and spends two weeks in the hospital. I mean, that costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars, as opposed to a prescription that would cost 20 or 30 bucks. I mean, this is some pretty basic stuff here. And the fact that the President has drawn the line in the sand on this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So in closing, I want to thank everybody, Mr. Speaker, for being here and for participating in the 30-somethings. But I also want to say that it's been a very enjoyable week for those of us who are baseball fans in northeast Ohio. Those folks who may happen to be in, say, Pittsburgh or like Florida, or like New England for example, who, baseball season ended a long time ago for some of you, and others who are not faring as well, our sympathies go out to you. But in Cleveland, northeast Ohio, Youngstown, Akron, it's been a great week, followed up by a great week we had a few weeks ago. And many of you may not know, Mr. Speaker, that the new WBO/WBC middleweight champion of the world, Kelly Pavlick, is from Youngstown, Ohio, too.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I'm not getting the kind of happy vibe from my friends.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the Web site is www.speaker.gov/ 30something. But I hope this has been persuasive to folks who are on the borderline here deciding on what to do.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Remember the beginning of this Congress that we gave an opportunity for every Member of this House to vote against paying the oil companies about $14 billion in oil subsidies, and a lot of our friends, who are now voting against the SCHIP for fiscal responsibility reasons, voted to make sure that we could not take that basically corporate welfare that we were giving to the oil companies. They voted to sustain basically that corporate welfare that was going to the oil companies. But it's important for us to recognize that Members of the Republican Party, the same Members who were voting against SCHIP, voted against the Democrats pulling the money from the oil companies and putting it back into alternative energy, to health care, to education, all these. You had this opportunity to do this, and they refused to do it. And to say now that you are going to draw the line in the sand, Mr. Altmire, you are going to draw the line in the sand on children's health care after raising the debt limit, as the gentleman from Connecticut just mentioned, five times they have asked to borrow more money from China, from Japan, from OPEC countries. Now you are going to draw the line in the sand on children's health care? Now, people are sitting at home saying, I don't know a whole lot about politics, Mr. Speaker, but my goodness gracious, you are picking this battle now on the backs of children. And I don't know, I didn't get to hear your whole argument on socialism. But my question is this. If everyone is saying that this is socialism, that this is somehow a socialistic step towards national socialized medicine, why are you negotiating it in the first place?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to say, the argument that you are going to hear over the next day is socialism. As the gentleman from Florida just said, it is like, what are you talking about? Go in to private hospitals, private doctors, there is no question that this is privately administered. But here is the question. If we peel it back $1 billion or $5 billion, is that all of a sudden not socialism anymore? I mean, at what number do we get to where it stops becoming socialism and it starts becoming a private, some kind of health care system? The arguments, the strawmen, the red herrings that have been put up on this debate are absolutely ridiculous. And I can't believe the President would draw the line in the sand and just have no arguments to back it up.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. From Ohio. A good guy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Can we live in the present? The Dalai Lama was here today, Mr. Speaker, and he's pretty much focused on how we should live in the present moment, and I think it would behoove all of you to take the Dalai Lama's advice on that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that. But I think, I want to, for the record, I want to clear this up. He says that the Florida folks weren't dancing in the end zone when University of Florida won the national title. I remember Ms. Wasserman Schultz showing up here in like royal blue and orange wardrobe with a purse that had a gator on it. I remember that. So that was a little bit of dancing in the end zone. I am being polite. I didn't even mention the fact that the Ohio State Buckeyes football team was number one in the Nation. I'm trying to be polite here. So if you'd show me a little respect.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just hope our friends who are opposing this bill to cover children's health care because of the cost of it, which we are paying for, will scrutinize the Iraq spending as it starts to come up over the next few weeks and few months. As we went over already, one day in Iraq, $330 million would cover 270,000 kids for a year for this program. That is one day. And if you go through 1 week, $2.3 billion would cover 1.8 million kids. And less than 40 days in Iraq would cover all of these kids that we want to cover, 10 million kids, for 1 year. Forty days in Iraq. And all we are saying is our priority is this. Now, I just want to take a minute here to just go over what has happened over the past 8 or 9 or 10 months here in Congress, what we have done, how we have shifted the priorities. We have the same Members who are voting against this bill who voted against the minimum wage increase. We have the same Members who are going to vote against the children's health care bill are the same members who voted against us increasing the Pell Grant and cutting the interest rates for college loans in half, the same group of folks. When we wanted to invest all this money in alternative energy research, we took it from the oil companies, corporate welfare, put it into alternative energy research. The same group of folks that voted against this SCHIP bill, children's health care bill, voted against that, too. And all of these issues come up. The only thing we can get them to agree on is probably the veterans spending, which was the largest increase in the history of the VA. So what we are saying is there is a pattern, Mr. Speaker, there is a pattern of behavior of a certain fringe group of people who are here that even very conservative people have agreed with us on this issue, and we can't get enough to override the veto. I don't know about you guys, but I have got a little restaurant I go to back home called Vernon's Restaurant, Vernon's Cafe, great Italian. But when you are sitting there and you are eating and you are talking to your friends who go through everyday life, they are talking about their student loans, they are talking about health care, they are talking about what are we going to do to stimulate the economy? Why are we so dependent on foreign oil? And we all have our own little Vernon's in all of our communities. We are trying to address these bread and butter economic issues, and I think we have in this Congress. And the one that lays before us here is children's health care. For God's sake, Mr. Speaker, God help us if we can't pass children's health care.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I bet I could guess, but I won't comment on that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, that's kind of like the President during Katrina; he flies in. He says, Hey, you're doing a great job, Brownie. Well, maybe you should look and see what he did before you start making the comments. So there's a little bit of a pattern that this administration may have.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And it makes our roads less safe. I mean, that's why you're here. That's why I'm here. We care about jobs. We care about economic development. We care about all these things, as we'll continue to talk about tonight, Mr. Speaker, but the bottom line is this. We have unsafe trucks that will be coming in that are now through the pilot program, will continue to come into our country, lack inspection, lack the safety standards that we're accustomed to in the United States. That puts those kids who are riding in cars in the other lane, or in front or behind or whatever the case may be, in jeopardy. We have certain standards in the United States.