Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We often hear in these debates how, you know, a certain party wants to spend money and waste money on this or that, and we are not saying that there is not waste in government, and we certainly want to address that. Our friends, our Republican friends, have done absolutely nothing to try to improve that. In fact, they borrowed more money from China to help fund the inefficiencies. But what we are saying here is here is a program that covers poor kids. It gives health care coverage to poor kids. So they don't go to school and cough on your kid and get your kid sick, not to mention the humanity of trying to make sure that they have the proper amount of health care.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I suggest you just let the other Members know exactly who this S-CHIP is supposed to cover, what it is.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think what is important, too, is we are not sitting here saying, and I do not want anyone, Madam Speaker, to misconstrue what we are saying. We are not just saying we are going to write bigger checks and all these problems are going to disappear. Included in our analysis of that document are going to be hearing upon hearing upon hearing. I have seen the schedule. We are going to get into the nuts and bolts of that to figure out how we can make these programs run better, how we can make S-CHIP with the same amount of money or more money cover more people, how does it get executed, the same with what we need to do with FEMA. Obviously, we saw that in Katrina. Mr. Murtha's having hearings and Mr. Skelton in the Armed Services Committee about the war, and how do we make that mess go away and make it work better, the execution of war and what we are trying to do, how do we make this thing work better. So this is not just about writing bigger checks. This is about making this whole system run better and more efficiently and more effectively and serve more people.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You know what is interesting, and it just hit me, that if we were not here, if Nancy Pelosi was not Speaker of the House, that budget would get implemented. That budget would become law in the United States of America. The only thing standing between that budget and the American people is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, or that stack of paper would become law, and the wealthiest in the country would continue to get tax cuts. We would continue down this road, borrow more money from Japan and China and OPEC countries. There would not be an investment in S-CHIP. There would not be all the stuff that Mr. Altmire listed. It is interesting to just say, hey, the American people did make a point to put us between that budget and their everyday lives.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So not only is the government not making the investments to keep tuition costs down, not making sure that we try to invest our money to reduce the cost of health care and Medicare and Medicaid, SCHIP, and some of these fundamental programs that we all believe in. We are not only not making those, but here is the critical components because, as you said, you get the additional burden of the interest rates going up for credit cards and everything else that ripples throughout your own than personal life. Here is the kicker. Of that red graph there, that red bar of net interest that we are paying interest on the debt, where are we getting the money? That is the question that we ask. Where do we get the money to close the budget deficit? Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: Foreign debt held doubled under the Bush administration to over $2 trillion. So we are not only spending money we don't have, we are not only giving millionaires tax cuts. But in order to close the gap, we are borrowing the money from the Chinese, OPEC countries, the Japanese in order to close this gap. So our kids are going to be paying the Bank of China and the Bank of Japan and the countries from OPEC, which is totally, totally ridiculous as to what our priorities need to be. So we need to get this budget balanced. I want to make one final point before I kick it back to you guys. We are going to ask people who make millions of dollars a year to pay more in taxes, because they have benefited from this system. Here is our option: We either go back to the Chinese and we borrow more money from them, or we ask people who have made millions and hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to help us close this budget gap. Now what would you do if you were in our position? Do you ask a millionaire to pay a little bit more in taxes or do you go borrow more from the Chinese and ask middle class kids and lower middle class kids to foot the bill? There is not a decision to be made. We have got to ask the wealthiest in our country to be responsible citizens of the United States of America. You benefit from our military. You benefit from the stability of our markets. You benefit from our public education. You benefit from our public infrastructure. You benefit from the water lines and sewer lines, clean air and clean water. All we are saying is we have to ask you to contribute so that we do not have to borrow money from the Chinese in order to fund it. We cannot be afraid. We do not want to stymie small business. We do not want to take away tax incentives from small business people to reinvest back into the economy. We want to keep things like that intact, but we do need to ask the wealthiest in the country to pay their fair share.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman. And part of what you were saying, some of those initiatives, the manufacturing extension program and some of these initiatives that we have had in this country that have really been able to help small businesses kind of retool themselves, where this budget is cutting them we have had to fight over the last few years to get the levels up. These are budgets we need to not only not be cutting, but we need to be probably doubling the size of the budget because of the kind of value that they yield and the kind of businesses that they help. When you look at what has happened over the past 5 years, we have had economic growth, but wages are down 3.2 percent. We are not arguing that the economy is not growing. We all know it is. We all see the same statistics. What we are saying is that it is not benefiting everybody. And what does our response need to be from the President, from the Congress as to how do we close that gap between the rich and the poor? And some of the initiatives that are being cut are going to further harm and aggravate and exacerbate the problems that we have now that we are trying to fix. So a couple points that I want to make here, and I want to thank you guys for being down here, that the President just doesn't even address. Here they are: Updated by Tom Manatos, one of the go to guys in the Speaker's office. Here we have the new charts for the budget, 2008 budget authority. Interest payments on the debt. That in the red is the interest payments. We are talking about $230-some billion of what we are going to spend. That is what this country will spend just on interest on the debt; not paying the debt down, just paying the interest payments from the people we are borrowing the money from. This is what we are going to pay in education or spend on education, and green what we are going to spend on veterans. This is what we are going to spend on homeland security. So the American people, Mr. Speaker, know quite clearly that we are spending too much of our money on paying down the interest. Now, it is an important point to be made that this President, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and the previous Republican Congress borrowed more money from foreign interests in the last 5 years than every President in Congress previous to them combined. So I find it very interesting that we hear our friends talk about how when they owned a small business they had to balance the budget. We know that. But when you got into this institution, this is what you did. So please spare us the lectures on fiscal responsibility.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Would the gentleman yield briefly? I didn't see where I fit.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Raymond John ``Jack'' Wean, Jr., Chairman of The John Wean Foundation in Warren, OH. The John Wean Foundation was established in 1949 by Raymond John Wean, Sr., an inventive and enterprising industrialist, who was devoted to improving the quality of life and education in the Mahoning Valley. The John Wean Foundation would serve the communities in which he had achieved enormous success. A native of Warren, OH, Jack was the son of Raymond J. Wean, Sr., who founded Wean Engineering Company in 1929. After graduating from Yale University, Mr. Wean served as a Naval Officer in the South Pacific during World War II. In 1946, he went to work for his father's business in Warren at a time when the steel and aluminum industries were booming. Jack started in an executive position and was elected president and chief executive in 1966. He became chairman in 1979. Jack retired in 1992, but continued to chair The Foundation. He traveled extensively and was an avid sport fisherman. Jack Wean was married to the former Adelaide McCracken and they have three sons and a daughter. They also have eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Since 1949, The John Wean Foundation has raised over $85 million dollars. It was through Jack's generosity that a broad range of nonprofit organizations would benefit. I would like to remember Raymond John ``Jack'' Wean, Jr., for his sense of obligation and commitment to the residents here in the Mahoning Valley.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. No consistency. What they said last year, they did not do this year. What they did last year, they do not want us to do. There is no consistency to their argument at all. Consistency is the word for today, the lack thereof on the Republican side. As we close, because I know we just have a few minutes left, and I want to yield back to my friend from Florida, I think it is very interesting what we are seeing happening already. We talked a lot in the last couple of years about oversight and that when the Democrats were in charge, Mr. Speaker, we were going to provide oversight. Now, we start seeing things open up in Iraq, with all these contracts, from all these big corporations who were getting all these big government contracts, all of the sudden you are starting to see come out of these committee hearings exactly what has been going on. Now you are starting to see maybe the administration was strong arming some scientists to spin global climate change data. You are starting to see this all percolate up. I think one of the other things we said we are going to do is execute our constitutional obligation to provide oversight, and we are seeing that, and we are seeing the results of that with the global warming, with the war in Iraq, things happening, that didn't happen in Katrina, all starting to rise up. I want to thank the gentleman from the Pittsburgh area and the gentleman from Connecticut, my two favorite people from Florida. I want to thank you and I yield to Ms. Wasserman Schultz for her closing remarks.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I find it very interesting as the debate progressed today to hear all the conservatives who have been saying government's too big and then they blew the budget completely out of balance, borrowed money from China and they are here complaining about all this government is bad stuff, well, you are cutting this program and that program. That is why I think they have lost a lot of credibility with the American people, Mr. Speaker, is because there is no consistency with their argument.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The interesting part here is the CR that we passed today was to clean up their mess that they left. They only passed one out of 13 appropriations bills. So you can only imagine, Mr. Speaker, all of a sudden they leave all of this mess for us to deal with and we try to deal with their mess and they want input. Well, you had your chance. You had 14 years and all kinds of months last year to pass this stuff, and you didn't do it. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate my good from Miami, Florida yielding to me. The funny part watching the debate today was that the other side, because they had the opportunity for so long to pass so many of these pieces of legislation and to get them through the Senate and get them signed by the President and they didn't take advantage of it, that they have very little credibility in dealing with the issue of the fact that we are actually doing this stuff. And so I agree with my friend Mr. Meek; it has been exciting. This is great. This is good stuff. You guys are reading the increases and the different programs. And, as Mr. Obey said, this is a thinking man's document.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Put me in, Coach.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that. Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield the remainder of the hour to Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I need to step out. I will be back, but I would like to yield the rest of the hour to Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to be here once again to continue the discussion of the 30- something Working Group. We want to thank Speaker Pelosi for the honor to be on the House floor. We actually had one of our newer Members, Mr. Speaker, make page 3. He is still a freshman, but he made significant advances. This is Jason Altmire, Mr. Speaker, from western Pennsylvania. His district abuts mine. His picture, name, pressing our leadership to make sure that we increase funding in the CR for veterans, to make sure that we did not accept any pay raise until the American people get their pay raise through the minimum wage. So we already have young leaders stepping up to bat contributing in their first term here. I have got to say, Mr. Speaker, it has just been I actually think in many ways pathetic to listen to the debate here today over the continuing resolution. We all know the political situation over the past, you know, 14 years, Republican control in the Congress, and their inability in the last several years to govern at all. And they have locked out the Democrats for years and years and years. Votes in the wee hours of the morning on the prescription drug benefit, on the energy bill, on budgets, which raided student aid money for students all across our country; and then, on top of all of that, they leave the new Democratic majority an absolute budget catastrophe for us to deal with. Over the course of those 14 years, the Republican Congress and the Republican President borrowed more money, more money from foreign interests than all of the previous Presidents combined. So now we are going to get lectures from the Republican majority on how to run the budget process. Now we are going to get lectures from the most incompetent, ineffective Congress in the history of this institution, Mr. Speaker, the history of this institution. This party will not be lectured about veterans' benefits, we will not be lectured to by the Republican minority about how to balance a budget, and we will not be lectured to about investments in this country. You look at this CR and you look what we put in. We are not going to be lectured to by anybody. We made promises and accomplished more in the last few hundred hours of this Congress than that Republican majority has in the last 14 years. We implemented PAYGO so we will balance the budget. We made some difficult decisions with the CR so we can move forward, and we are not going to be lectured to. Because we have made promises, and we have delivered. Now just look at the first hundred hours, Mr. Speaker, just the first hundred hours. We cut student loan interest rates in half. Once fully implemented, it will save the average person taking out a loan almost $5,000. We raised the minimum wage. We allowed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices on behalf of the Medicare recipients. We repealed the corporate welfare to the energy companies that that majority, Republican majority put in place; and we are taking that money and investing it into alternative energy sources. We are doing things positive for the American people. And we are going to inherit this budget, which we already have, that has borrowed more money from China, borrowed more money from Japan, borrowed money from OPEC countries, incapable of executing FEMA to address natural disasters and emergency situations in the United States. We know how to run Government. When the Democrats passed the budget in 1993 with the Democratic President, created 20 million new jobs, we had surpluses as far as the eye can see. So we are cleaning up a mess here that we have inherited, and we are going to move forward and continue with our agenda, and we are proud. We are going to move forward, and we have an agenda. We have moved on it. We promised it. We acted on it. And we are going to continue to move on it. I will yield to our young, new rising star from western Pennsylvania, Mr. Altmire.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You have got to move on. And you are the guy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, life is about letting go.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are going to be the Congress. That is right. We are going to be the Congress. And, you know, it is not government is the problem, government is wrong, government is your enemy; it is going to be, wait a minute. This is something that is supposed to work and we are going to make it work.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And if we get an opportunity as we go through the oversight of the war, oversight of FEMA contracts, there are millions and millions and millions, if not billions, of dollars that have been wasted through the war, the contracting, the Halliburtons. You know, story after story we hear off the record, that is all going to come out through the hearings. You know, if Halliburton has a truck and the tire goes out, they just get rid of the truck and they buy a whole new one. Well, that is at the taxpayers' expense. And there are stories after stories after stories of these kinds of things happening. So part of what we are doing is we are making the tough decisions today, the responsible decisions today, get into the oversight, find out where the waste is; and I really hope that we continue to push Mr. Tanner and Mr. Cardoza's bill that says we audit the whole government, because this government is clearly incapable of functioning in the 21st century economy. If we are going to have the resources that we need, Mr. Meek, to invest in education, to invest in the health care, to invest into those things that are important, that are going to yield benefits, business incubators and research and development and stem cells like we did with the corporate welfare to repeal some of that, that was easier to do than getting to the nuts and bolts execution of government, but it is going to be a lot of hard work over the next few years to figure out where we are wasting money, what programs aren't working. Now we may have and be in agreement that the principle of a program is what we all agree on, end poverty, provide health care for kids, whatever the case may be. But the actual execution of that program may not be yielding the kind of results that we want or at the level we want. There is still too much poverty. There are still too many kids out there that don't have health care. There are still too many kids that qualify for S-CHIP that aren't signed up for it. So, you know, over the course of the next year or two, as we go through the oversight hearings, we are going to be able to determine what programs work, which don't and which ones we need to fix. That is difficult to do.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield? What I think is an important point here is that we could have come in and not passed the pay as you go. We could have done the irresponsible thing. And everyone says, well, the Democrats are controlled by all these interest groups. Well, we could have been irresponsible and said this interest group is going to get this and this one is going to get that, and we will borrow the money from China, as Mr. Meek had the chart up, and we would pay everybody back. I am telling you, Madam Speaker, she is great. We are doing the right thing. We could have done the easy thing, and we could have paid everybody back and made increases that were irresponsible because we would have continued down the charts where we are borrowing the money from China, paying the interest. They are taking that money, investing it back in their economy, buying submarines and everything else. But we did the right thing. So we have got to take the hit now, but the long- term economic interest of the country is going to be much better off.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield? It was interesting, because one of our friends from the other side gave a 5-minute speech about the values of free trade. I think pretty much everything he said I agree with, and I voted against almost probably every trade agreement that has come before this Congress since I have been here. And I agreed with everything he said. We are trading. It creates value. It invests in our countries. We all understand all that. The problem is that we are not making the investments into the United States that will help us grow new sectors of the economy that will replenish the jobs that we may be losing. Now, people in Youngstown, Ohio, obviously, don't like to lose their jobs. But if there was a job there that they could get trained and go into and make the same kind of living and have the same stability for their family and provide for education and health care for their own family, they would be fine with it. So you can't have free trade and then not invest in the stem cell research. You can't have free trade and then not invest in the alternative energy research to help stimulate the economy and create new sectors that will ultimately yield employment for our folks in our communities. Be happy to yield to Madam Chair of the Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And it is exciting because it is just starting, Mr. Murphy. It is just starting. And when you meet with the Speaker and you see the intensity in her eyes and the focus about this was really just the beginning and we are not here to say, well, we did our first hundred hours and we are done. We are going to chalk it up and we are done. This is about continuing to move forward. We have got to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. And when you talk to Chairman Miller, who is the Chair of that committee, you see the look in his eyes about an opportunity to change the face of education in this country, to finally put some resources back behind No Child Left Behind to where it actually will work. And when you look and you see, and I know, you know, Senator Kennedy is talking about putting money in there to help school districts figure out how they can possibly extend the school day and extend the school year so that we can make sure that our kids are on par with kids from Korea and some of these other countries where they go an extra couple, 3 weeks a year more than us, which equals another year or two over the course of a 12-year education cycle. These are the kind of things that we want to implement here. And if it wasn't for the, and we got into this, too, a lot back home. You know, a lot of people had an almost unrealistic expectation that we came in, we can come in now, Mr. Murphy, and Ms. Wasserman Schultz and wave a magic wand and all of a sudden there is a lot of money here. Well, we have got a lot of making up to do because of the irresponsible fiscal inadequacies and inability of the Republicans to actually balance the budget. So we have got to go up and clean that mess up. We have got to figure out how to extract ourselves from this morass we are in in Iraq and then finally make the investments that we want to make. So we have got a lot going on here, Mr. Meek, and we are very excited about the proposition that we have in the future. When you look at the opportunities that we really have in this country, I think they are great. But it is about focusing on the human capital in the United States of America, Mr. Murphy, and making sure that we make the kind of investments into the health care, education in the United states and the stem cells and the alternative energy are going to put us on a strong path to move forward. And I would be happy to yield to my friend from Connecticut.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I did, yeah. I actually spoke at the Akron Press Club, which I felt was very important. And then I spoke at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel grade school, my old Catholic grade school. And we had a little alumni affair there. It was interesting, because there were so many people talking about what had happened down here, the historic nature of the changes. And when you look and you think about all of the political promises that we have probably all heard in our careers at one point or another about, we are going to do this, we are going to do that, and you hear people say that. But for Speaker Pelosi and the majority here to lead and run campaigns all over the country and make those assertions and make these promises and then to come within the first 100 legislative hours and actually deliver on these issues is impressive. And I think it tries to restore some of that credibility that has been lost, I think, over the past couple of years. So we immediately stabilized a lot of families. I mean, it is not implemented yet, but our goal: minimum wage, cut student loan interest rates in half and help negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs. And then open up two new sectors of the economy by repealing the corporate welfare and investing that in alternative energy sources, which will lead to more research from the private sector, investment by the private sector, and try to open up this new alternative energy sector of our economy, and then the stem cell research bill, which will allow us in the health care industry to open up and do further research to move the economy forward. So we are trying to do some compassionate stuff, some progressive stuff, but at the same time stabilize. It has been interesting. It has been fun to go back home. Mr. Meek, as you remember the last couple of years, you would have to go back home, and you are talking to your constituents, and there is not a whole lot to say. You know, we were often talking about what we were trying to prevent from happening, or motions to recommit or amendments we offered for PAYGO in all of those committees and Charlie Stenholm and Dennis Moore who offered all of those provisions to try to balance the budget by implementing PAYGO. Well, we implemented PAYGO from the House side. I think it is very important that we were able to actually go out and do that. So I am excited about what is happening here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I had an interesting weekend, and I am glad to be with you and our new friend from Connecticut. I had a very interesting weekend because everyone in Niles, Ohio, in the Mahoney Valley, was talking about the first 100 hours. So I found it very interesting that so many people were actually paying attention to what was going on here. I think a lot of it had to do with Speaker Pelosi and the first woman Speaker being here. But there was a genuine excitement that things had changed in Washington, D.C. and I am sure you felt it in Miami. I know you were there. I talked to you last night. You were there. And I am sure they felt it up in New England.