Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What we're trying to say is we don't want to be in the same position 20 years from now or 10 years from now that we're in today, so that means that we need to make some long-term decisions. It's easy to come down to the floor: Drill, drill, drill. Drilling will not solve this problem. If you look at what President Bush's policies have been, if you look at what the Republican Congress' policies have been--drill, increase by 66 percent--gas still goes up through the roof. The war in Iraq has totally destabilized the region that has more oil than anywhere else, and it has totally helped to drive up costs. What we're trying to do is to have these mature discussions, not drill and veto, drill and veto, drill and veto. Let's stop the manipulation of the commodities market. Let's stop the manipulation of the futures and everything else where it's just continuing to drive up the cost of gasoline for average people. That is basically what is going on. I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz made a great point. There are 68 million acres of land, Federal land, that the oil companies could tap into if they wanted. They have not. As for the refining capacity in the United States, everyone says, ``Build more refineries. Build more refineries.'' The refineries we have now are only working at 85 percent. So there are a lot of smoke and mirrors coming from the other side. What we are trying to say is we need long-term, responsible policies that are going to stop providing corporate welfare for the oil companies, and we need to invest that money into long-term biodiesel, nuclear, wind, solar, and all of these other issues. With that, I'd like to yield to our good friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What's funny here, Mr. Speaker, is that this is another pattern, as these issues continue to come up, where the Republicans continue to offer solutions that have absolutely nothing to do with the problem that we're trying to deal with. You know, they lack ideas. They are a party that's void of ideas. We cannot drill our way out of this problem. That's the issue here. Drilling has increased in the last 7 years by 66 percent, and there has been no decrease in the price of gas, there has been a tremendous increase. And on Friday, there was an increase in the per barrel cost of oil that was larger than a barrel cost 10 years ago. So the increase this year was more than a whole barrel cost 10 years ago. We've been drilling more than we've ever been drilling, 66 percent more in the last 10 years, and it's still not reducing the price. The key here is we need to move off of our dependency on foreign oil. So if you look at what the policies have been up to this point--and everyone says, you know, they come down to the floor, ``if we could only drill in ANWR,'' if you started drilling in ANWR today, you wouldn't get a drop of oil for 10 years. And in 20 years, you would only reduce the cost of a gallon of gas by one penny. That is the energy plan of the Republican minority in Congress and President George Bush: Go drill, and in 20 years we'll save you one penny per gallon of gas. What we're trying to do is to make a very mature decision, which is unusual for Washington, that if we take the $15 billion or $18 billion in subsidies that we're giving to the oil companies under the Bush administration, we can move that into alternative energy research and development and have a long-term plan to solve this problem. We do not want to be here. Hopefully, God willing, our constituents will continue to elect us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I'm sorry.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you look on every issue, right, it is like we get hit on 9/11, the Taliban is housing them in Afghanistan, somehow we end up in Iraq. We have an energy problem. Drilling is up 67 percent. We have all this land and everything else, all these other areas. We got to keep drilling. That is the answer, when we know that it is these other things going on in the commodities market. We look at trying to reduce the cost of college education. It is like we will put the banks in charge of loaning the money to the kids. Or if we want to provide prescription drugs, I got an idea. We will have the taxpayer pay for it, and we won't do any negotiations with the drug companies at all. It is like they have a solution that doesn't address the current problem that we have at hand, Mr. Speaker. And what we are trying to say is we have solutions that will last more than a decade or two, and if they are wrong, we will switch them. But to come down and say drill, drill, drill, drill, drill. In ANWR, for example, it will reduce the cost of a gallon of gas by 1.8 cents per gallon of gas 20 years from now if we start drilling today. Totally off the mark.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Before we were even born. But they have been dealing with this issue of oil and gas and the Middle East and dictators and how do we do this and prop up this one and try to figure it out. In this whole scheme, I was watching a thing on Darfur last night. The only reason we couldn't get things done in Darfur is because China has oil in Sudan and we couldn't go in there because they were blocking things at the UN. Oil has become a major, major geopolitical and domestic problem in the United States of America. It has come to a head, and it is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the Democrats who are trying to move us off the dime and say long-term alternative energy is the investment. If we drilled in ANWR today, in 20 years you would save 1.8 pennies per gallon of gas. We can't drill our way out of this thing. So if we don't start getting innovative and having a NASA-shoot-the- moon project for alternative energy, we are going to be in the same spot a decade from now, two decades from now. Our constituents did not elect us to come down here and play politics with this.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say 1.8 cents per gallon of gas 20 years from now.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. When you look at what the Speaker has been asking the President to do now for weeks, possibly months, to suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we have this reserve in the United States that a certain amount of barrels of oil go in a day. And this is to make sure that in case of a crisis, we have oil for national defense purposes and so forth. This is oil that's going in every day. The Speaker, based on the history and what the experts and the economists are telling us, is that if you divert that oil that's going in to the petroleum reserve and you allow that oil to be purchased on the market, that it will drive down the cost of oil. And this will lead to a savings at the pump of about 25 cents per gallon because there will be an increase in the supply of oil in the market and it will drive the cost down. Now, we're not sitting here saying that this is the magic wand we're going to waive and everything's going to be fine. But what we are saying is, when you implement this and you take some of the pressure off, you can save almost $6 a barrel and 25 cents at the pump. So if you are a truck driver, Mr. Meek, 25 cents, when you're putting 20 or 30 gallons in, adds up when you're spending your life driving. And throwing the kids in the back of the mini van or filling up the truck and going back and forth, this is a significant savings. And the Speaker has been pressing the President to make this move and put this oil back into the market, Mr. Meek, but hasn't had any success at all. I yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely. And I think you've made some great points, Mr. Meek. I just would like to say that, if you listen to some of our friends on the other side talk about gas prices, here is a party, Mr. Speaker, and an administration for 6 years--and the President and the Vice President being oil men--not doing a thing on energy, dependence on foreign oil, so on and so forth, to somehow accuse the Democrats of not addressing the issue, and completely oblivious to the fact that we're the ones passing legislation to crack down on price gouging, Mr. Meek. We're the ones that are passing legislation to hold OPEC accountable for price fixing. It's the Democratic Party that's repealing the subsidies to Big Oil so that we can take that money and invest it into alternative energy sources. It's Speaker Pelosi that's calling on the President to take the barrels of oil that are going into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and put those in the market to drive down gas by a quarter, that's something easy we can do. But it is the President and the Republican Congress, Mr. Speaker, that have consistently vetoed these bills or put the kibosh on them in the Senate, blocking lower prices every step of the way. And if you look at what we have done here, pushed by the Speaker, to have fuel efficiency standards being raised for cars and trucks, we will reduce oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels per day in 2020. This is forward-looking. This is something that will save consumers between $700 and $1,000 at the pump in 2020. Now, we know that's not addressing the issues today. We're talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We're talking about cracking down on OPEC. We're talking about cracking down on price gouging that may be going on in the United States and our local communities. These are the short-term issues. And each one has been opposed by the Republicans and has been opposed by the President of the United States. So when you ask the folks at home, Mr. Speaker, what the Congress has done, the answers are here. And if anybody wants to know what they are, they can go to the Speaker's Web site. Trying to stop price gouging at the pump, price manipulation from OPEC, divert the oil that's going into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that's what we're trying to do here. Repeal the subsidies for Big Oil and put that money and invest it in alternative research. Mr. Speaker, these are the policies of the Democratic Congress. And each one of those has been opposed by the Republican Party and opposed by the President of the United States, period, dot, Mr. Meek; period, dot. So let there be no mistake, when common sense tells you we have a couple of oil barons running the executive branch, Mr. Speaker, and the Democrats are trying to push these initiatives to provide some relief for the common good and the common folks that we represent and it's opposed by the Republicans and opposed by this administration, it's important for us to set this record straight, Mr. Meek. So as we begin to wrap up here, Mr. Meek, I would like to yield to you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What's wrong with that?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, I appreciate that. And you brought up those who are serving here. And I think it's worth noting that the veterans measure, another initiative that the Democrats have tried to push for a new G.I. Bill, for free college for our vets, opposed by Defense Secretary Gates, opposed by the administration. This is an opportunity for us to thank those men and women who are serving our country to say, when you get out, you're going to have free college tuition anywhere in the country. And I think that's a small gesture. And once again, I think the President and our friends on the other side are out of step with what the American people think we should be doing. It's one thing to wave the flag, and it's another thing to put your money where your mouth is. So, Mr. Meek, I want to thank you for the opportunity to join you here on this beautiful Thursday evening in Washington, D.C., and I look forward to coming down here with you next week and continuing to make the case for the programs that Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer and Mr. Clyburn and Rahm Emanuel and John Larson are pushing in our caucus. These are the issues that we care about and we're going to continue to push.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to once again start our 30-Something hour. We will be joined later by Congressman Meek from Florida to talk about the issues of the day and how what has been happening here in Congress affects what is going on to young people, but not limited to just young people in the 30- something bracket, but also to young people in college, young people in their 20s, young people trying to figure out how they are going to make their way in the American economy in the 21st century. As we know, Mr. Speaker, we have been given many challenges over the past few years here in Congress dealing with many of the issues that face Americans. Since Speaker Pelosi took over a short time ago, we have been committed, since this Congress was taken over by the Democratic Party, we have been committed to push initiatives that are consistent with the values that we hold dear in the United States of America. We hear a lot of rhetoric about values in this country, but if the policy initiatives that come out of this beautiful building in Washington, DC do not reflect our values, then we are in the wrong business. And I am proud to say that since we have taken over here, we have shifted course from policies that many Americans believe have taken us in the wrong direction. And many of us still believe, even those of us here think we have made a shift in policy, but it has been difficult with the President to try to get a complete pivot out of the months and months and months and years and years and years of bad policy. So I think it is important before we talk a little bit about what we have done is to go back and think about what we are trying to come out of, some of the challenges that this country faces. I think it is important to recognize politically that from 2000 until 2006, the Republican Party controlled the House, controlled the Senate, and controlled the White House. They had an opportunity to implement their policy--the neoconservative foreign policy, the conservative domestic policy, the conservative energy policy, the conservative higher-ed policy in America, the conservative ``compassionate conservative'' agenda on poverty and inequality--has all been implemented. So when we talk about what will it look like if the conservative agenda is implemented, I think that is a false analysis of what will it look like. I think we know. I think what we are living with here today is the implementation of the conservative Republican agenda. They controlled the House, they controlled the Senate and the White House. The Bush tax policy, the Bush energy policy, all of these things that I have already mentioned have been implemented. And if you want to know what it looks like, all you really need to do is go to the gas tank. You need to get your health care bill and see what your premium and the costs look like. You need to pull out the stub of your child's tuition. All of these things are the end result of the Republican domestic agenda being implemented here in the United States of America. You may not like it. I know a lot of Republicans, Mr. Speaker, who don't like it, but that is where we are. And if you look at the financial situation that this country has been put in, the straightjacket that we have been put in that a lot of the changes that the Democratic Congress wants to make that we are at this point unable to make because of the financial position that we have been put in as a country and as a Nation, the fact of the matter is this: President Bush, Mr. Speaker, and the Republican Congresses that were under his watch borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President and Congress before President Bush combined. Now think about that. In just those few years, President Bush and the Republican Congress borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President and Congress before them combined. The Republican- controlled Congress and President Bush raised the debt limit five times and borrowed $3 trillion primarily from Japan, China, and OPEC countries. Now you want to talk about a scam going on and a shell game, we have a situation where we are borrowing money from oil-producing countries to basically give us money to go out and buy their oil, or to borrow money from oil-producing countries and from China so we can fund a war at $12 billion a month and put it on the credit card. Now that seems to me the definition of insanity, Mr. Speaker. Three trillion dollars, and this is as simple as your house payment or your car payment. You borrow money and you have to pay interest on it. So countries like China will get the interest that the United States is paying on the money that we have borrowed, and the Chinese will take that money and they will sink it into developing and industrializing their own economy. And they are putting up nuclear plants so they have nuclear energy. And they are building roads, bridges and industrial parks. And they are funding their military and their navy. That is what they are doing with money that the United States is borrowing from them. And we take the money and we get ourselves into this war in Iraq at $12 billion a month, that is soon approaching a trillion dollars for the cost of the war, and some economists are saying at the end of the war, the grand total will be $3 trillion. Now from Youngstown, Ohio, and Niles, Ohio, and Akron, Ohio, the folks that I represent are not really comfortable with the United States taking their tax dollars and paying interest on money they are borrowing from the Chinese so that the Chinese can build manufacturing facilities and manipulate their currency and ship the products back to the United States and put American workers out of work. Now, there's something ironic about what's happening there. And there's really something sick, Mr. Speaker, about what's happening here. And when you look at the polls and you hear people say that 70 percent of Americans think that we're going in the wrong direction, the President has an approval rating of 28 percent, and the other 72 percent do not approve of the job that he is doing, you have to ask yourself, what is wrong? What is wrong? What is going on to have this dramatic breach in the American body politic? And so, when Speaker Pelosi, and when we ran our elections in 2006 to come and take over Congress in 2007, it became imperative for us to try to pivot and shift this thing in another direction. So one of the issues is make sure that we pay for programs that we have here in the United States. No deficit spending. Now, we've had problems, especially with the war, because we're committed over there. And it's been very difficult. We've tried to get out. The President has vetoed every attempt we've ever tried to make. But we're trying to establish public policy in the United States of America that represent our values. And if you look at what we have pushed coming out of this body, I think most Americans would agree, these are some pretty basic steps that we want to take. First thing we did when we got in is raise the minimum wage. For the first time since 1997, the American worker got a pay raise. It wasn't much. It should be a lot more. But we did what we could. And we said, this is a priority for us. 10 years without an increase in the minimum wage, but health care and energy and all of these other costs are going up for folks. Let's try to lift some people up, reward work. And we did that. We have switched and tried to repeal the oil subsidies, corporate welfare, many of us know it as corporate welfare. Everyone hates welfare if we're giving it to poor people. They should go to work. They should work. This is America. We should not give welfare. That's the rhetoric that you hear. But behind the scenes, our friends on the other side and President Bush are very happy to give the oil companies 14 or $15 billion in oil subsidies, in energy subsidies. Now, can you imagine, and today when you go to the gas pump and you pay $3.50, $3.75, $4 for a gallon of gas. You think you're frosted just filling up the tank. Think about the fact that President Bush said that he will veto any bill that comes out of this House that repeals the $15 billion that's going in corporate welfare to the oil companies. Now, can you imagine, in this day and age, where Exxon's profits are through the roof, that the President of the United States says he will veto a bill that strips the corporate welfare out? They're making tremendous profits. And what we have tried to do on the Democratic side, and Speaker Pelosi has tried to do, is to take that 14 or $15 billion away from the oil companies, away from the energy companies, and invest that money into alternative energy research; into wind, into biomass, into solar. Now, we all know that these alternative energy forms, there's not one silver bullet. There's not one project or product that's going to come out and save us all and be a panacea for the entire United States of America and the world. We know that. But Americans invent things. Americans make things better. Americans take a challenge and a problem and they fix it, and they solve it. They put the best and the brightest people that we have in this country, and they set a goal. I'm not going to go do the research. President Bush certainly isn't going to go do the research. We've got a couple of rocket scientists that belong in this body that have been elected by their constituents here that may be able to actually do some of the research. But, for the most part, our job here is to set the public policy and provide the resources and the leadership for the country. And that's what we're trying to do is to say, invest into the Department of Energy, partner with energy companies. We know you're not going to get rid of oil overnight. Many of us believe nuclear has a major role in what's going to happen here. But the bottom line is, let's make an investment into the United States, into the people, into the human resources that we have here to figure out what we're going to do, and then get the private sector and private enterprise to partner with us to get this thing kicked off. It is crucial for us to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, crucial because we can extract ourselves from a lot of these political situations that we find ourselves in. In a lot of the global politics that we see and read, if you read between the lines and you think for yourself, you will see that there is some kind of energy component behind this, behind the politics that are going on, the geopolitics that are going on. And if we can become dependent on the Midwest instead of the Mideast, I think this country will remove itself from a lot of the problems that we have had, and we could help move this country forward. And that's what we are committed to doing here in the United States. And just today, or yesterday, out of the Education Committee, George Miller, who's the Chair of the committee, they passed an authorization, I think, of $6 billion, if I remember correctly, to help schools, new schools. There'll be a formula to make sure that the school is green. So now, you're providing some leadership for the companies that will provide the products for a school or a building to become green. There'll be a little bit of a stimulation. And I want to tell one quick story that I found interesting. We have a gentleman here in Congress, his name is Jim Oberstar, and he's the Chair of the Transportation Committee. He's been here since the late 1970s. And I may miss a few of the facts here, but the point can be made that in the late 1970s, when he was a Member of Congress, and President Carter was in, he was trying to--the solar panel, there was some money put into the Department of Energy to research and develop alternative energy sources. And something popped out of that, it was called the solar panel. And Mr. Oberstar had a piece of legislation that said we need to retrofit all Federal office buildings in the United States with solar panels. And by the Federal Government coming in and buying the solar panels, it will stimulate the solar panel market because the Federal Government is such a big consumer, and just like buying pens and everything else, and it will drive the cost down of the solar panels. So that was in 1977, 1978. In 1980, when President Reagan came in, he completely eliminated that part of the Department of Energy that was providing that research and, basically, nothing happened. And he has now went from a rank and file member; Mr. Oberstar is now the Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. So he now has this bill that he reintroduced, told his staff to go back and get his notes from 30 years ago about what he wanted to do with solar panels. Now, can you imagine how far behind the 8-ball we are? When you look at production of solar panels, it used to be an industry that the United States excelled in and that we had a great share of the solar panel market in the early 1990s. But now, we have been surpassed because we have not made the investments. And I'm not here, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Meek, to say that government somehow has all the answers. But we do have a role to play in stimulating the economy, Mr. Meek. And when we do that, we will allow the private sector to come in. So we need to do what we need to do with alternative energy research. We need to do what we need to do with high speed rail. We need to do what we need to do with broadband access. These are the things that government has a role in, infrastructure, education, health care. These are the things that we need to invest in. And that's what we've been trying to do in the area of health care. One of the things that, I mean, you can't really find a better example or illustration of a difference in values from Speaker Pelosi and President Bush on this one issue. It's the issue of state, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. When we came in, one of Speaker Pelosi's priorities was to provide leadership and resources for the State Children's Health Insurance Program. This is a program that would provide health care, Mr. Meek, for 10 million children of modest income, didn't quite qualify for Medicaid, middle class kids, middle class families struggling to provide health care. This was to fill that gap. Bipartisan support here in the House, and in the Senate, tremendous support. So it passed the House, passed the Senate, President Bush vetoed it. Now, can you imagine where your priorities are when you're willing to spend $12 billion a month in Iraq, and you won't sign a children's health care bill to provide health care for middle class citizens at $35 billion over 5 years? But you'll spend 12 billion a month in Iraq and not even ask a question as to where the money's going. There's billions of dollars that are lost in Iraq, nobody knows where they are, Mr. Speaker. Nobody knows where that money is. And we struggle to find $35 billion to provide health care for modest income families. That investment that, at the end of the day, will probably save us billions of dollars because these kids won't go right to the emergency room. They'll have some preventative care. That will save us money in the long run. And the President vetoed it. And he vetoed it. And in the Senate, 80 Senators overrode the veto. But in the House, we could not override the veto because a handful of Republicans on the other side were committed to support the President in his position. Now, can you imagine that? In the wealthiest country in the world, the dominant super power, we can't scrape up $35 billion over 5 years to provide health care for middle class kids? And the President thinks he's taken a stand on this issue and saying he's fiscally responsible, after running up $3 trillion in debt, borrowing it from Japan and China and OPEC countries? When you're deciding on where your philosophies are, what your values are, this is the issue. This is the defining issue. Health care for kids, $12 billion a month in Iraq. Tax cuts for people who make billions of dollars a year, health care for kids? This is clear. And our job, as representatives of the people, Mr. Meek, and I'll kick it to you here in a second, is to make sure that we bring some equity into this system. And I will say this. The investments that we have made, or tried to make on SCHIP, the minimum wage, alternative energy, the fact that we did pass, and the President did sign a $1,000 increase in Pell Grants over 5 years, for students, and we cut the student loan interest rate in half, from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. So if you are going out trying to borrow for your kids, your interest rate is cut in half. Those are the priorities that we push every day here on this House floor. Those are the priorities that are going to lead to an expansion of our economy. We only have 300 million people in this country, Mr. Meek. There's 1.2 or 1.3 billion in China, 1.2 or 1.3 billion in India. We only have 300 million. And the philosophy of our party is to make sure that we invest into those 300 million people, to make sure they're educated and they're healthy. And I feel like if we make sure our kids are educated and healthy, that most everything else will take care of itself. That's where we are. That's the agenda we're pushing. Mr. Meek, I appreciate the fact that you're taking time away from your busy schedule and family to come down here, and I would like to yield to my very good friend from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentlelady yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I don't know if you've had an opportunity to see the documentary, and I haven't seen the documentary, but I've seen Phil Donahue talking about the documentary that he did, it's called ``Body of War.'' And it's basically these soldiers who have come back and the injuries that they're dealing with, the folks that we see going up to Walter Reed. And talk about an eye-opening experience when you first go to Walter Reed and you see these 21, 22-year-old kids without legs, without arms, severe brain damage, brain trauma, you know, all of the gruesomeness. But I think Donahue does a good job by bringing this to life and doing a documentary, Eddie Vetter does some of the music on it, so it's really a compelling case. But it goes to the point that we're all talking, you know, we're all talking numbers, 4,013, and 29,628 injured. I mean, these are numbers, but these are families that have been ripped apart, that will never be the same. If we have an opportunity and enough facts to stop this thing, because it's not in the best interest of, obviously, a lot of these families, but this country, and you look at the human cost, as Ms. Wasserman Schultz has said, is tremendous. The financial aspect of this is detrimental to the future of this country. The readiness of our own troops, the lack of readiness, to be able to address some of these problems. And this is not something that you have to believe the Democrats or believe a politician on, this is retired Major General Punaro, Commission on the National Guard and Reserve, ``we think there is an appalling gap in readiness for homeland defense because it will be the Guard and Reserve that have to respond for these things.'' Army Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody said the Army, ``no longer has fully combat ready brigades on standby should a threat or conflict occur.'' We're not making this up. In this country, we need to be prepared to responsibly, prudently, and practically disengage ourselves. Empower the Iraqis. We've trained them for years. You know, I hate to always fall back on this example, but it's like when you're getting ready for a football season or a basketball season or a baseball season, you go through spring training and then the game is on a certain day and the coaches are coaching you, at some point you've taught the team all you can teach them, you've practiced as much as you can, and you're not fully ready for the game, but you've got to go play. And the coaches can't go on the field for you. And that's the situation we're in. The Iraqis are never going to be perfectly prepared, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It's never going to be perfect. There's never going to be a perfect time where all these people are trained to the tee and we're going to be able to say, now they're ready. Because you always make mistakes, you're never trained enough, you're never prepared enough, especially when you're dealing with all the cultural issues that we're dealing with. So what we're arguing is that they're never going to be perfectly ready. And I think there would have been a better chance the other day of these thousand soldiers sticking with the mission that they had and staying there, but they knew the Americans were there, and so it became convenient to say, I'm out of here, the Americans will take over.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, when you look at how many different ways the Iraq war is like that pressure point that you hit and it has all these different ramifications all over the country, all over the economy, all over our society in so many different ways, and this is the one issue that needs to be addressed if we are going to make any kind of headway into converting our economy over from manufacturing and basically the industrial age into a new high-tech economy that everyone benefits from it. Now, in Youngstown, Ohio, or in Warren or Akron or Cleveland or the industrial Midwest or Pittsburgh, Detroit, whatever the case may be, if the amount of money that was spent already in Iraq, nearly $1 trillion, was invested into these communities that, for example, have been hurt by globalization, and the big debate in the Ohio and Texas primary was NAFTA, NAFTA, NAFTA, and some areas benefited and some areas didn't, and Texas did this and Ohio did that and whatnot, just think, if all the communities that were very successful 50 years ago and pumped a lot of money into this country in steel and rubber and coal and all this stuff that were hurt by globalization, the investment of $1 trillion was made into those communities in water lines, sewer lines, roads, education, community colleges, worker retraining, investments into the NIH research, investments in alternative energy, figuring out who's going to make the windmill, figuring out how biodiesel is actually going to work without having all these different adverse effects, figuring out who's going to make the solar panels and how we're going to make these investments, $1 trillion that has been spent in Iraq, and we have no real signs of success. No real signs of success. So this is what we're all factoring in here: The fact that it's costing us $1 trillion already and projected to be $3 trillion; the fact that all that money is borrowed; the fact that our friends on the other side raised the debt limit five times and borrowed $3 trillion already from Japan, China, and OPEC countries; the fact that our homeland has suffered because of the Guard and Reserve, and so we are incapable now of addressing major threats to the United States; the fact that our army is not at the level it should be, all of these factor in. The lack of readiness, the money, and then the lost opportunity. We are Americans. We think about what can be. We think about the future. We think about where we want to go, what we want to be, what we want to do. And we are stuck because we don't have the resources to make the investments that Americans have always made: canals, railroads, Internet superhighway, investments in all these research projects that bounce into the Internet and put men in spaceships and land them on the moon. That's what Americans do. So let's put ourselves in a position where we can make these investments so these kids that we talk about all the time can have a future, have an economy. When you look at the benefits of NASA and science and technology and math over the years, how many corporations benefited from all of that, that's what we're talking about doing. Let's think about the future. And when you look at this war as missed opportunities with Afghanistan, national security alone. We have missed opportunities catching bin Laden, focusing on Afghanistan, focusing on the global war on terror, these networks. We should have been tripling and quadrupling our special forces and hiring people who speak Farsi to translate tapes that we're pulling down from the satellites. All this stuff could have been done. A missed opportunity. Economically, missed opportunity. So, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, thank you for coming down to this floor and claiming our hour tonight, and it's been great to be with you again. And we're going to keep plugging away here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As we've gone through this debate for years and years and years, as you said, we've been on the floor talking about this for a long time; and you start to hear these arguments, the same ones over and over and over regardless of what the facts are on the ground. And the issue, I think, that has become most apparent, and some say the surge was a success. Some say, well, maybe it wasn't. Some say there hasn't been any political success. Some say there has been some. I think this has kind of gotten boiled down to one point. Some people are saying we need to stay. And you know what? Maybe, maybe if we accept that argument, maybe they're right. Maybe we should stay. But they're only going to stay at the expense of the future of this country. We will bankrupt this country if we continue to stay in Iraq. And when you look at all of the great powers over time, they get too extended, too far out, too far out ahead of themselves; and what we are saying here is there is a reality on the ground that we need to deal with in order to address the issues that are facing the United States of America. This is about making sure that we are a strong country. If we are not a strong country, we are of no good to anybody else. And the point that we are trying to make and that the Speaker is trying to make and the Democrats in the Senate are trying to make and like-minded Republicans are trying to make is that we can't sacrifice the United States of America for Iraq. Now, we do bear some responsibility because we went in, but you can't continue to say that we are going to borrow, because we don't have this money. We are borrowing it all. $3 trillion is what the projections are now for the cost for Iraq when you factor in vets coming back and health care and what not. $3 trillion? We are going to borrow it from China and Japan and OPEC countries to fund a war that we are not having any political progress at all? The sides are not reconciling. They're not moving forward in the political process. That's a problem. So, even if you say we need to stay, you need to then be willing to spend enormous amounts of money, United States dollars, over the course of the next several decades and, as some people have said, over the course of the next hundred years. And what we are trying to say is, we've got problems here at home that we need to deal with. We've got an energy crisis. We've got a health care issue that needs to be dealt with. Growing inequality. We can't afford to spend $3 trillion on this war. Now, I don't think that's unreasonable because the strength of the country is at stake, and all we have to do is look around. We don't have this money. And this isn't just us. Joseph Stiglitz, Noble Peace Prize economist, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has severely weakened the U.S. economy whose woes go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion, yes, $3 trillion, on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home. This is a political reality that we have to deal with in the United States of America. And we are making difficult decisions. No one is saying yank the rug out. We are saying have a responsible, planned exit in which this country and the soldiers that we have trained and the close to $1 trillion that we have spent already, that investment, allow these people to take over their country. I think there's a little bit of a misperception that there is not going to be, like we are going to be able to just leave Iraq, whenever it is, tomorrow or 10 years from now; and if we do it right, that there is not going to be any conflict, we will just kind of sneak out and everything will just harmoniously arrange itself. And I think we need to realize that whether we get out 6 months from now or a year from now or 8, 10 years from now, there's going to be conflict. You have got groups of people that have hated each other for thousands of years. And there is not going to be any real polite settlement of this dispute. And so we need to realize that. And by realizing that, I think it helps us get to the point where we say, well, maybe we need to just get out now because this dust-up is going to happen anyway. And when you look at what happened the other day with the Iraqi offensive onto this militia group and then a thousand Iraqi soldiers left and abandoned the mission, would they have left if we weren't there? That's a question I think we need to ask, would they have left? But they know we're there. This is part of the problem. We're creating a welfare state. These people are in a state of dependency upon the United States, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And if we continue to be there all the time, we're never going to leave, we're always going to be here for you. You know, you see all the time, this is the equivalent of a 35-year-old person still living at home with their parents. They get into a state of dependency, and they can never be responsible. And I understand all the dynamics. I didn't want to go into this war in the first place, I was against it from the beginning, so we've got some responsibility to bear. But haven't we made the investment? And we know at some point they've got to step up and make their own way here. So I think a lot of us are just saying, let's just do it. I yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is the pressure point. This is the issue facing our country, and we are going to keep speaking out on it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is a free country, and I am an American so I am going to say what I want. Our friends on the other side, this alternative budget, alternative this, alternative that, I think it is important for us to recognize if you want to know what the conservative, neocon- servative, right-wing government looks like, all you have to do is open your eyes, read the paper, go to the gas station, pay your health care bill, pay your tuition bill, and you will know that philosophy implemented is the reality we are living in today. They deregulated the financial markets, deregulated the energy sector, gave billionaires tax cuts. You see this every day. Increased tuition, energy costs going up double the rate of inflation, milk going up 26 percent, eggs going up 40 percent. And $3 trillion in war over the course. And you put all of this together and you say that's the alternative? That's what you want us to go back to? We spent the whole year just trying to get back to ground zero, raising minimum wage, cutting student loan interest rates in half, investing in alternative energy, implementing the 9/11 report, making sure that our veterans are taken care of. We are still digging out of a hole. Can you imagine, these folks raised the debt limit five times to the tune of $3 trillion, borrowing it from China, Japan, and OPEC. And the mortgage crisis, the anxiety people feel, that is the conservative Republican agenda implemented. We don't have to look anywhere; we are living it now. Now. So we don't have to look too far. The other day the President said if the Democrats repeal the $18 billion in corporate welfare for the oil companies, I will veto any bill that has that in it. Now can you imagine how screwed up the situation is. Consumer protection, toys, pet food, food coming over, medicine coming over from China without the proper folks checking the stuff out, mine safety has gone down so we have mining accidents because there wasn't the proper oversight. We know what happened with Hurricane Katrina and FEMA because we put political hacks in jobs. All of this happened under the conservative Republican agenda. So I just would like to say we are working very hard to balance the budget, make investments in education and our vets, take care of the environment, and make these investments in alternative energy so we can have green collar jobs replacing the blue collar jobs we have been losing.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That's the real deal. Another quote, ``There has been little, if any, change of the stress or tempo of our forces,'' calling the current pace of operations ``unsustainable.'' That's where we are. To quote Cody again, ``Where we need to be with this force is no more than 12 months on the ground and 24 months back.'' It is critical that these soldiers get the kind of rest that they need. When you look at the cost now, saying the projection, when you factor in the health care, and we are close to a trillion dollars for this war, and the projections, when you factor in the health care costs over time, this war is going to cost us $3 trillion. And we have Members of this body who stand up and want to slash out an earmark for $250,000 to help a local community that doesn't have any money put in an EPA-mandated sewer and ignore the 800-pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room. It is a shame. It is a shame that the debate has gotten that messy. If we stay focused on what we have been trying to accomplished in the past few years, focus on the veterans, focus on making sure that there is an assessment for their mental health, making sure that they have their money, which we put up, the highest investment in veterans' health care in the history of the VA, those are the kinds of things that we need to focus on as a country in a time of war. I would just urge all of our colleagues to have this debate be civilized and not taken to the lowest recesses of political dialogue, which is sometimes I think where we end up.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You were mentioning the troops and how complicated things have gotten. One of the things you mentioned was what was happening in Iraq, and Mr. Meek mentioned how we got in. I think it is important to recognize, and there was a great article today in the Washington Post, what is happening with our troop strength, where we are getting to the point, we have all of these troops who go for 15 months and come back for a year. We are hearing from psychologists and psychiatrists at Walter Reed that they are not getting enough downtime. It is intense, urban warfare. They are not getting enough downtime, and that is contributing to a lot of the psychiatric problems that our troops are coming back with that need to be addressed. What people are saying now in the military is that it has to be a year on or 15 months on, and 2 years off. Can you imagine if that is the recommendation. The recommendation is 15 months and then 2 years. Or it may even be 1 year. No, they are asking for 1 year on, 2 years off; and then if they have to go back, send them back. Can you imagine, that is the recommendation. For them to now say you wonder what the issues are going to be when it is 15 months on, 1 year off and back again, the psychological effect on our soldiers and the cost long term to our VA health care. I think that is important. I wanted to highlight this. This is General Richard Cody, Army's vice chief of staff who was testifying yesterday, and was talking about basically troop strength. Mr. Meek, you sit on the Armed Services Committee. You know how critical this is to where our country needs to be in case there is another conflict somewhere in the world that we have to react to. Right now what the military leaders are saying is that we do not have the capability to react to that. Now can you imagine putting this country in that position, that we can't handle two separate fights going on at the same time when that has been the golden rule from the military for years. And what Cody said was that ``I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today. The Nation needs an airborne brigade, a heavy brigade, and a striker brigade ready for `full spectrum operations' and we don't have that today.'' Now if anybody wants to make a judgment, it is not the Democrats making a judgment against President Bush, this is the Army vice chief of staff who happens to be retiring in the next couple of months and maybe feels a little freer to say the kinds of things that need to be said, but if we don't recognize what position we are in, and then to have some folks saying we need to be there another hundred years, how are we going to possibly sustain this?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is important for us to recognize as we have this debate in Congress, we recognize where we are at right now. And our friends are talking about their alternative budget, and I know my friend from Florida doesn't like me using quotes from the other side, and I understand that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I was also watching our friends who were here before, and they were saying things like: We have been so unproductive in this Congress. We haven't really done anything; and the things we have done, they are all bad. And I wrote the quote down. They are all bad. Is this bad? Is this piece of legislation that we passed to make sure that our soldiers get at least looked at for traumatic brain injury, is that bad? We can give the gentleman an opportunity to come back here and maybe correct his statement, because I am sure he didn't mean it. But to inject the kind of politics that some folks have on this floor over the course of the past few years into this debate has really poisoned it; and these are things that have been successful. The largest increase in veterans spending in the history of the VA. Was that bad? Increasing the minimum wage. Was that bad? The education funding, more funding and more expansive, and the most investment this country has made since the GI bill and the education. Was that bad? Cutting student loans. Was that bad? I don't think so. So we are trying to have these debates here very civilized in a bipartisan way and talk about how we can improve the situation for our soldiers. I didn't mean to interrupt.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my partner from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire) whose fingerprints are all over this amendment.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank the gentleman and appreciate the bipartisan support of this amendment. Funding education, trying to reduce the cost of college is not a partisan issue. This is something that we need to do as Americans if we want to stay competitive. You can't fund your military without a growing economy. You can't have a growing economy without investments in education. This particular amendment has taken the advice from the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance that was started a couple of years ago, offered this as a suggestion. We're taking that suggestion; we're working with it. Colleges in Ohio, my alma mater, Bowling Green, is now, through this program, offering books for 35 percent of what the book should cost. So a $100 book, through this program at Bowling Green is 35 bucks. That's a significant savings for our students. So I want to thank the bipartisan support, thank Speaker Pelosi, and thank Chairman Miller for their help with this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.