Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You said you wanted me to say it, but now you are cutting me off.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, I want to say, too, you were talking about college education, and we only have a few minutes left. One of the studies that was done here, they are calling it the ``Boomerang,'' and this article was on ``CNN Money.'' It says study hard, get into a good college. Graduate. Move back in with Mom and Dad; 61 percent of college seniors plan to return to their family home after graduation, according to a survey taken this spring by monster.com. Sixty-one percent. So I think that illustrates the trouble we are having with the job market, the failure to invest, the failure to invest in science, the box that this administration has put us in.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Rockthevote.com.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And this is not a partisan issue.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And this is a clear difference of opinion, and I think the administration has clearly articulated where they want the country to go. And I want to share a statistic that I think I have shared here before. When I was in the State Senate in Ohio, the University of Akron did a study; and the study was amazing what the impact of State support for higher education was. And the study came back, and it said for every dollar, because in Ohio we were going through the same kind of budget cuts as everyone else, and the legislature at that time and the Governor at that time, still do, are going after the big pot of money that is going to the universities. So the study came back. The University of Akron did a study. It said for every dollar that the State of Ohio invested in the higher education, they would get almost $2 back in tax money, basically because a high school diploma, a worker with a high school diploma would make about $20,000 a year average. Someone with a college diploma, with a BA or a BS, would make on average 35 or $40,000 a year. So this person who had the college diploma would pay double in taxes and then go on probably to get a master's or something else, and then you would pay even more in taxes, income tax, sales tax, property tax, the whole nine yards. So from the State's position, every dollar you invest, you get almost $2 back in tax money. That is a good deal. That is a good deal, because you are investing in the long-term growth of your economy. It is that person with the bachelor's degree. For the most part, there is always exceptions, and I am not saying you have to go to college to be successful, because you do not, or have a college degree to be successful, because you do not; but on average those people will be out in the economy creating jobs, being entrepreneurs, developing the new technology, the new economy that needs to grow, which we do not even know what it is yet. And so the best thing that we can do now is just educate a lot of people and let them go out into the economy, support them with business incubators, worker retraining, small business loans; let them go out into the economy and create and manage new, alternative energies and on and on and on and on. That is a whole other story, but my point is that what do you want? If you are sitting at home right now in Ohio or somewhere across the country, what do you want? What would you rather have, a government that is saying we are going to invest in you and in your children, in their college education so that they will eventually become taxpayers? Or do you want a check for $300 from the Bush tax cut, while your property tax goes up, while they have to pass a police and fire levy in your city, while your tuition increases go up. I know in Ohio they have gone up 9, 10 percent, 3, $4,000 over the last couple of years. And then when you look at the health care, up $3,000. There are certain things that we can do together as a country, as a people, as a Congress, that we cannot do on our own. You cannot build a hospital on your own. You cannot build a road on your own. You cannot build a school on your own. There are certain things that we need to do as a country, and one of the things that we need to do is to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to go to college, because it will benefit everybody, and in the long term we are all going to benefit. What I want the American people to know from my perspective is that the difference is the short-term, $300, here is your check, government is, you know, giving you something back, which is great and I think a lot of middle-income people need that, and I think we should support the child tax credits and eliminate the marriage penalty, my own opinion; but to give millionaires a hundred thousand dollars back at the expense of veterans, investments in education and all these other things. I mean, for example, and I am going to finish here, when we tried to come here about maybe a couple of weeks ago, maybe 3, 4 weeks ago, and we wanted to say the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Appropriations, tried to pass an amendment, and he is the Democrat. We tried to pass an amendment that would rescind the tax cuts for millionaires. The millionaire worker would still get $23,000 back from the Bush tax cut. So we did not completely eliminate the tax cut for him, but we reduced it in order to fully fund veterans, fully fund No Child Left Behind, fully fund college education, reduce the cost of tuition, double the Pell grants, the whole nine yards, invest in health care, provide more coverage for children, and it went down. And I think that, if there is one vote over the last 2 years for this Congress, that will be the vote. Were you going to stand here and vote for millionaires and make sure that these programs are not funded, or are you willing to say we need a certain percentage of that tax cut back, because the long-term interests of the country are at stake? And I think those are going to be clear votes that a lot of people will hear about, and I just think it was an opportunity for all of us to straighten up this budget, the problems that we have been having, and invest in our country. And we did not do it, unfortunately.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I have one here from 40-something.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. President Clinton said ``save Social Security first'' from that very podium. Play it smart, do not spend money you do not have. I think that is one of the issues that we have talked about early on, and more so last year than this year, but all of these tax cuts that we have been given which are great, and I know a lot of people who have benefited from the tax cuts, and God bless them. But when we look at the government's financial position, we have borrowed that money. We did not have that money. There was not a surplus here that we said we have billions of dollars, let us give it back and let the American people have it. We went out and borrowed that money. So we borrowed it and gave it to primarily the top 1 or 2 percent. Then we have to pay interest on it. So really we borrowed it, we are paying interest on it and gave it to rich people who are not investing it back into the economy for the most part. Because we borrowed it, we have to pay the interest on it so there is not really a tax cut, there is a tax shift. So the next generation of Americans, they are going to have to pay this bill that we have left here. We have almost a $600 billion annual deficit for the past year. That is getting rolled into our $7 trillion debt that we have. So almost 20 percent of our annual budget that we pay down here is interest on the debt that we have. So if you keep accruing this big debt, you have to keep taking tax money to pay it off. Who is lending us the money? Japan and China are lending us the money. So it is not bad enough that we are borrowing it to give it to the top 1 percent, it is not bad enough that we are borrowing it and paying interest on it, we are borrowing it from the Chinese and the Japanese who are taking the interest money, and they invest it in their factories because a lot of their factories are state owned. So the state takes the money that we borrow from them, and they invest it back into their company and steal our manufacturing jobs. Their economy is booming, and they are doing it with our tax dollars. It makes no sense. Until we get it right down here, we are going to continue to erode the middle class of the United States of America, our cities, like Youngstown, Ohio; Warren, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio, these areas which have seen their manufacturing base erode. They have to keep passing police and fire levies. They do not have the tax base. Mental health levies keep going down. We have people that need mental health treatment but they cannot get it because we cannot pass a tax. All I am trying to say here is let us be responsible, let us take a step back, look at the big picture, not self-interest but what is in the best interest of our society. I believe if we would have taken the Bush tax cut, made sure, like Senator Kerry wants to do, take billions of that and give it to the States where they have to use it at the universities to lower tuition prices, double Pell grants, this is long- term economic planning for us. We do not have it right now. It is frustrating.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And we have to listen to some Members from the other side of the aisle, they are talking about how the Democrats, they want to keep spending. The Democrats are tax and spenders, and we sit here and scratch our heads because if Members have been paying attention, Republicans took control of this Chamber in 1994 with Newt Gingrich. They have had the Senate and have had the White House for 3\1/2\ years. They are spending like drunken sailors, and all they can say is look at the Democrats spend; all they do is tax and spend. It is not us. Mr. Speaker, we were the ones trying to pass the pay-go provisions which mean if we increase spending, we have to raise taxes on millionaires or we have to find another program you want to cut. Pay as you go. We were trying to get that in here. It was the Clinton budget in 1993 that balanced the budget, that invested in the proper programs.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes, and it is the same exact situation. We have given these companies free rein. We do not object to people wanting to make money. If you can go out in the economy and do well for yourself, God bless you. That is what America is all about. However, you are not here to manipulate the system, and that is what is happening right now. We have these corporations, as we said, they move the headquarters to Bermuda, they do not pay any taxes, they move the production manufacturing site to China, they do not pay anything in wages or in environmental. OSHA. There is no OSHA in China. There is no safety and occupational hazard prevention in China. That does not exist. So you take advantage of the workers there, you take advantage of the tax system here, and you reap the benefits of the profits. Then you take the profits and you put them into this place, into the Congress, and you keep getting the same kind of deals over and over and over. And who is losing? The average people who used to be able to make a middle class wage in the country. They used to be able to afford health care. I want to mention to my colleague a study that the Toledo Blade paper in Ohio, in Toledo, Ohio, has been doing. They noted for the average American family, with a median household income of $42,409, average median income $42,409, that they have seen increases in their premium payments, this is a family of four, go from $6,348 to $9,086, which is a $2,738 increase from the year 2000. Now, I know a lot of companies back in my district that are now renegotiating their contracts and their proposals are zero percent increase in wages in the first year, zero percent wages increase in the second year, zero percent wage increase in the third year, and then maybe in the fourth and fifth year there will be some increase. But imagine if you are in a family of four that is making $42,000 a year, very little disposable income, and you may be trying to send your kids to college and over the last 3 or 4 years you have an extra $3,000 a year after taxes that you have to pay in health care increases. This Congress has done nothing to address health care. And if there is an issue that needs to be talked about this fall for this election, it is health care. We have done nothing to control the prices of prescription drugs. Two things we tried to do during the Medicare bill, and I realize this will not affect everybody, but the Democrat proposal was we wanted to negotiate health care prices with these big major drug companies. We wanted the Secretary of Health and Human Services to go to Pfizer and all the big drug companies and say to them, if you want the Medicare contract and the $500 billion that we are going to spend, you better sit down and talk price with us. We want a discount for the taxpayer, for God sake. Right? We wanted that. And then we wanted reimportation. Let us free trade pharmaceuticals. We free trade cars, textile, steel, everything in the world we want free trade, but when we tried to impose at 3 o'clock in the morning the free trade pharmaceuticals, no one wanted to talk about it. So we are not controlling prices, we are asking the taxpayers to spend an extra $500 billion, and we have done nothing in the market to somehow try to fix a $2,700 increase for a family of four making $42,000 a year. Nothing.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So the company that gets the most money from the homeland security budget.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And what do they pay in taxes?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think all of us were very excited about the announcement of Senator Edwards to join Senator Kerry on the ticket, and I think it illustrates the kind of excitement that is going to be around in the fall. I mean, I think it is going to be an exciting election, and we have to celebrate not only what party we stand for but I think process in general, the fact that there is going to be a great election; and Americans are going to get to decide whether or not the President who has been in charge for the last 4 years is going to get rehired, or if he is going to get ``Donald Trumped,'' and we are going to ask somebody else to come in and take over and set us in another direction. I think what we have been trying to do here is try to articulate for a lot of the people, not only those people who are 30 or 20 or in college or in high school or affected by the No Child Left Behind, but also to say to other Americans who are concerned about the future of this country that we are going to have real debate. And I think, from the e-mails we have received, and from the comments that we have heard and the calls we get at our office, people have appreciated the fact that my colleague and I are not personalizing this. This is not personal, this is business. This is my colleague and I discussing issues that we believe in and the direction we think the country should go in, as opposed to the direction that I think the Republican Congress, the House and the Senate and the Republican White House right now, wishes the country to go in. I think there will never be a clearer choice in any election as to where we want to go and where the Republicans want to go. This is our e-mail here: 30somethingdems@mail.House.gov. That is the number 30, the word something, the word dems, D-E-M-S, at mail dot House dot gov. We have been getting some great e-mails, from both of the parties. I listened to my colleague's opening statement and the one issue I think we need to touch on, there was an article today in The New York Times. Paul Krugman did an opinion editorial and he talked a little about the Bush boom and how the tax cuts that President Bush initiated and passed and pushed through this chamber and also through the Senate has peaked. And I thought it was very interesting. We had moments in November, December, January, February, some early parts of this year where we actually thought we had some job growth. Things were starting to come along and we thought the economy was starting to turn around. Now we have recognized that the job growth has slowed. It is still growing, but it has slowed from previous months. And not only has it slowed down, but the unemployment rate is still at 5.6 percent. So it has not changed. There are still thousands of people who are no longer actively seeking to find work because they know the job market is so slow. So here is the point I want to make. We had two choices in this country after 9/11 with all the tax cuts. We had two choices: Are we going to try to get some short-term political gain with this trickle- down theory of economics that was proven that did not work in the 1980s, or were we going to continue with the Clinton-era balanced budget, invest in education, invest in health care, invest in the American people and allow them to go out and grow the economy? We chose the former, which meant tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, and primarily to the top 1 and 2 percent of the people in the country. The theory was that they would begin to take those tax cuts and put it back into the economy. But when we look at the statistics, corporate profits after tax are at the highest level compared to the GDP of the economy than they were since 1929, since they started keeping track of this stuff. So if you are a major player in a corporation, you are doing great, sending jobs to China, move the headquarters to Bermuda, where they do not pay any taxes there, they pay no wages in China, and they take the money and put it in their pocket.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. God bless.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. August 22 it will be 1 year for me.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. My wife made me get it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I missed my colleague.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, pull it out.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be here with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) and the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud). Maybe we can get a two-on-two basketball game going here, the Ohio guys against the Maine guys. I just want to say what an honor it is and how terrific it is I think that the gentleman from Maine became the ranking member on a subcommittee in the Committee on Veterans' Affairs in his freshman year. I think that speaks volumes of how he has been approaching the issues and how important it is to him. But the one issue I wanted to just touch base on for a few minutes, and I know it is getting late and our time is limited, about the mandatory funding. We have an opportunity to make sure that our veterans are funded every single year through the mandatory funding provisions that we want to implement. Right now it is discretionary funding, it is up to the whims of Congress on whether or not our veterans should get their health care. The request from the Secretary of the VA is completely underfunding the needs. Everyone keeps saying, ``Well, we're spending more on veterans now than we ever have. We are spending more. We have increased by X percent over the last few years.'' And the one point that continues to get ignored is that we have thousands of more veterans entering into the system. So although there is an increase, if you increase it by 5 percent and the numbers of veterans coming in increases by 10, 15 or 20 percent, then the money you have in the pot is not big enough to handle the needs for our veterans. And what has happened under the current system, under the discretionary funding system, is that we have failed to keep pace with the medical inflation; we are rationing care to our veterans; we are denying services to some, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said; we are foregoing a lot of the modernization techniques and investments. And the one point that I really wanted to bring up because I think it is so appropriate given the state of war that our country is in, reducing the funding for research and development for prosthetics. The VA was award winning in the country for the kind of developments and the research that they would put in and the kind of advances that they have had regarding amputees and trying to help amputees who come back. In this war we have seen more amputees than we ever expected because we do not have the armored Humvees, and just the way this guerrilla war is being fought, we have a lot of veterans who are losing their arms, losing their legs, and now back at home we are cutting the investment for trying to improve on prosthetics. Not only that, but when we take a step back and we look at the big picture, this is about choices and we can say we do not have enough money to fund all these programs for our veterans. That is a shame in itself if one has to say that, but at the same time they will not reduce the tax cut for millionaires. We are not asking to reduce the tax cuts for anyone that has made under $300,000, $200,000. In fact, Democrats want to increase the child tax credit and increase the breaks for middle-class people. But when one says that they are not willing to repeal any portion of the tax cut for people who make more than $1 million to pay for this veterans funding, we have a problem in this country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I want to share with the American people, because it is easy to say that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) or the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) or the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) are the ones saying we need to do this. Almost every major veterans organization has backed the mandatory funding proposal. The American Legion, the AMVETS, Blinded Veterans Association, Disabled American Veterans, Jewish War Veterans of the USA, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Paralyzed Veterans of American, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans of America, these are veterans organizations who are saying this is something that we need and we are willing to put our names on it. I think that is important. It is the same with mental health, homelessness and all the other issues that we talk a lot about in committee. So I just want to thank the gentleman again for the opportunity to be here. It has been great over the last few weeks and months to watch all of the history of the World War II veterans and everything that has been shown on TV and on the history channel and the dedication of the monument and everything else. I think when we are talking about values and talking about priorities, and as the gentleman from Maine said, as a legislature, you have to make these choices, and they are not always easy choices. But when you compare what we are doing and how many trillions of dollars we are giving a way to the top 1 percent of the people in this country, at the expense, it is not free money, it is at the expense of veterans, and where would those people be if these veterans did not protect the system, the economic system, the democratic system that we have in place right now that enables them to create the kinds of wealth they have created. God bless them. We are not here to say they should not make their money, but we are saying society has an obligation to treat these people fairly, and right now they are not.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. 30 Something Working Group. Send us an e-mail. 30SomethingDems@mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail. We would love to hear from you. We would love to hear what you have to say. We have to continue to have these discussions. Again, as we started, this is not personal. We need, you and I hopefully in our own little way, to raise the level of debate here to say it is not venomous, it is not malicious, it is not personal. We do not mean to personally attack anybody, but there are some real policy concerns. In a time of war, I think we have even more of a responsibility to do it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is mine. This is my role.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You are not going to take it away from me?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Before we get into this, because we, being on the Committee on Armed Services, we talk about this all the time. This seems to be like every conversation you have on the floor and off the floor somehow gets back to the war, somehow gets back to this administration's march to war. I just want to be clear with the American people, this is not personal. This is not us trying to demagog an issue for political gain. We have 800 soldiers who have been killed. We have thousands of soldiers who have been wounded. We have had hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Iraqis killed because of this. This is a distinction that my colleagues and I have to make because we are elected Members. My colleague represents 700,000, my other colleague represents 700,000 and I represent 700,000 citizens of this country who want to know why we are in the predicament we are in. This is not personal with the President. I am sure we would all say he is an affable man who we all would probably sit down and have a Diet Coke or a cup of coffee with and completely enjoy the time together. But, we have an obligation, a constitutional obligation because this Chamber, Article 1, section 1 of the Constitution says the people govern, not the administration, not the executive branch. The legislative branch, everything starts here in the House. This is why we are bringing this up. This is why my colleagues and I are going to have this discussion because we have a responsibility to question the leadership of this country, a constitutional obligation that when we stood here a year and a half ago, we put our hands up and said, ``I do,'' ``I will.'' So I did not mean to interrupt my colleague, but I think it is important that we lay this out before we have this discussion to say this is not personal. This is about the policies of this administration that we questioned initially, our voices were not heard. The press tried to question early, they were shut out. And now we are in a situation where we have not been given all the facts. So I am sorry to interrupt my colleague, but I wanted to lay that out before we got moving here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield? That brings up the whole point that I have been trying to make for months now. And I am going to continue to make it until somebody hears me or maybe we could figure out why we did this the wrong way. Today in our Committee on Armed Services, Secretary Wolfowitz said we went to Iraq because there was a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And he said we went because Iraq was harboring terrorists from al-Qaeda. And we went because Iraq was funding terrorists. Connection, harboring terrorists, and funding terrorists were the three reasons throughout the committee, we were there about three hours today, that the Secretary gave. There was an article today in the Houston Chronicle, it said, verbatim, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia harbored al-Qaeda, funded al-Qaeda, and they were connected to al-Qaeda, more so than Iraq. So the dangerous thing that we need to talk about if this is the standard, if you have been connected, harbored, or funded terrorist organizations, the United States or some other country could now go to war with this country. So we should be in Pakistan, we should be in Saudi Arabia, we should be in Iran, we should probably be in Sudan where bin Laden met supposedly with the Iraqi official. When does this end? When does this end? We have pulled our troops out of Afghanistan, we have 130,000 in Iraq. We have 10,000 in Afghanistan. Why cannot we have elections in Afghanistan? We do not have the security. They are all in Iraq. Why is poppy now half of the GDP in Afghanistan? Because we do not have enough troops on the ground in there. And they said we wanted to set up a democracy in the Middle East? Why did we not do it? We were already in Afghanistan if we wanted to set up a democracy in that area of the world. And it is very frustrating, and I think the ultimate issue that we have talked about many, many times, I say to my colleague from Florida, is that when we asked this administration what the deal was with the poppy, 70 percent of the worlds's poppy which turns into heroin, is converted into heroin, is from Afghanistan. And when we asked this administration what they were doing about the drug problem in Afghanistan, the $2\1/2\ billion that is coming out of there, that is going right to al-Qaeda, that is going to continue their terrorist acts, direct funding, drugs on the market in the United States and elsewhere, mostly in Europe, to al-Qaeda to fund terrorists, we asked what are you doing about the drugs, the poppy this year? And the answer was, ``We missed it.'' ``The harvest came in early and we missed it.'' I want to repeat that. The harvest of poppy came in early in Afghanistan and we missed it. And so it has already been harvested and it is already on the market being converted into heroin on the market now. So there will be 365 days worth of funding of al-Qaeda from the drugs that are grown in Afghanistan. And there is one reason why that happened: We do not have enough troops on the ground in Afghanistan. We have 10,000 or 11,000 there. We have 130,000 in Iraq. Imagine if we would have spent just half of what we spent in Iraq and had half the troops that we have in Iraq in Afghanistan where bin Laden came from, what the situation would be. We would have a democracy in the Middle East, we would have taken care of our drug problem, and we would have elections that would not have to keep getting postponed. I am sorry to talk so much but that is so frustrating to me. I cannot figure out why we did what we did when we did not have our problems fixed in Afghanistan.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, there is going to be a great opportunity this week for us in the House of Representatives, and I hope the people at home pay very close attention to this. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member on the Committee on Appropriations, great guy, will have an amendment this week that will repeal a portion of the tax cut for millionaires, people who make $1 million a year or more. They will still get a tax cut, but it will be repealed partially. That money will go to fund veterans and will go to fund homeland security, two major issues that we have talked about in this Congress over the last year and a half that are underfunded. The homeland security is very important because we are only checking one or two of all ships that come into ports in this country. We do not have enough first responders in this country, and we do not have enough border patrol. We do not have enough Coast Guard. All underfunded. So this is going to be a clear message to the American people. Is this Congress going to support people who make over $1 million a year and say they have to have their tax cut regardless of what any of the other challenges are in this country, or are we going to be responsible and we are going to fund local initiatives that are going to help protect people in this country and, in turn, invest in our veterans? I think that is a clear distinction to make, and people who make less than $1 million are not even going to be affected by this. I would think that, again, the point is that without these veterans, there is no system where you can generate $1 million a year for yourself, and I think it is a clear distinction and it is going to be a great vote; and I think it is going to articulate for the American people the difference between the two parties. I am sure the other side will say, we are raising taxes, and the answer to the American people, yes, we are for people who make over $1 million a year. They will see an increase.