Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have given many speeches on the floor of the House, but none do I feel so good about as the one I am about to give about my friend and a great man in Warren, Ohio, Coach Tony Napolet. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the recently completed season and the still ongoing career of someone who is an institution in Ohio high school football in the community of Warren and the family of Warren John F. Kennedy High School. It is Coach Tony Napolet. Overall, Coach Napolet has garnered three top 10 AP rankings, five State semifinal appearances, a winning percentage of 71.6 percent during his time at Warren John F. Kennedy High School and an overall coaching record of 191 wins, 84 losses and three ties. All of the records, all of the statistics and all of the awards, Mr. Speaker, cannot speak to the influential and inspirational man that is Tony Napolet. Mr. Speaker, in short, he is a legend. He is funny, he is passionate, he is loyal, he cares about his kids, and he is the best. Tony Napolet is every part of what a high school football coach should be. He realizes and has always realized that the role he plays is not just that of a football coach, but as someone who is preparing young men for the next step in their lives, whether that involves football or not. I had an opportunity as a young man to coach for a season with Coach Napolet at Kennedy, and you think about how you try to define, Mr. Speaker, or pick a couple of points that really describe Coach Napolet, and there are a couple that I think of. One is his faith in God, something that he is not afraid to share with his players, the students at Kennedy, and it is not just the prayer before the game, and it is not just the mass that we go to before the game. It is when you go to a mass during the week or in the morning and you see Coach Napolet at one of the many churches, Catholic churches, in the City of Warren, where he is actually practicing what he is preaching. I remember him telling the kids to have a relationship with God, to make God your best friend. It is that kind of an example that he sets for his kids. But there is another one, the St. Henry's Division V State championship game several months ago, that I think really sticks with these kids. And it is the situations that Coach Napolet is in and how he responds to them, because life many times is about how you respond to situations in your life. The Kennedy team was, unfortunately, down 21-7. Then they got the ball, and then they were down 28-7 towards the end of the game and only a few minutes left, and the Kennedy offense got the ball back, and they ran a flee-flicker. They tried to score. Regardless of how much time was left in the game, Coach Napolet was teaching these kids that you never give up. You persevere, regardless of what the circumstances are. And those are the lessons that he has taught those young men who have graduated from Kennedy and have played football for the Warren John F. Kennedy Eagles. So, today, Mr. Speaker, I am not honoring a coach and his distinct record but rather a great man who also happens to be a coach. Coach Napolet, we love you and you really are the best.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, for any Members who want to, also to their constituents, if they want to look at some of these charts we have, www.speaker.gov/30something, get on the Web site, send us an e- mail at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov, you will get a chance to look at all these charts. I appreciate our friend from Connecticut joining us. I look forward to our President's speech tonight and hope it is inspiring and filled with good information and good public policy that we can work on in a bipartisan way.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One of the issues, you know, the more you talk, the more you see how all this just really ties together. This is health care costs and tying in a way to the minimum wage. The average family health care premium in 2005 was $10,880; and the salary of a full-time year-round minimum-wage worker was less than that, $10,700. So you will work as a minimum-wage worker 40 hours a week for an entire year and not even be able to pay for your full health care bill. Now, in the United States of America, there is something wrong with that. There is something wrong with the wage of the minimum-wage worker, and there is obviously something wrong with the cost of health care in the United States because of this kind of backward system that we now have that just basically treats diseases and is not focusing probably like it should in preventing a lot of these things from happening. And I think the more we reach out through the SCHIP program to make sure that these families who are qualified for children's health care know that they are qualified, to get them signed up, because at the end of the day it is the right thing to do, it is the compassionate thing to do, but at the end of the day it is going to save everybody a lot more money, too. If we can get these kids at a young age and make sure they are treated, evaluated, they know the direction that they are going in, they know the medical history of both parents so that they can be treated accordingly. I appreciate what you are saying and I appreciate you bringing up the issue of health care. I know we are running down here; the clock is ticking, Mr. Meek. I would be happy to yield to you in order to get us down the road here of wrapping things up. I appreciate all the comments that have been made here, and I appreciate our young friend being here with us, who is probably older than me. I yield to our fearless leader from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is why we are friends, stuff like that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that, because that is exactly what happens is you don't have the money, there was no pay-as-you-go in the last several Congresses, runaway spending, borrowing money from China. What does that mean? Well, here is our budget priorities for 2007 prior to Democrats taking office, budget into the billions of dollars. This red bar here is just interest on the money that we borrowed. This is not paying it down; this is just paying the interest on it. You know, you get your mortgage and you get your car loan and you open it up and you have got a 5 or $600 payment. You see $300 of it is actually going to the payment and the other stuff is interest, and it breaks your heart. This is what the country is doing. But compare that to what we are doing, this is education, homeland security and veterans. This is going back to China; this is going back to some of those other countries. And then you look and you see China says the test they did in space does not signal an intent to militarize space. You can't get the real facts on China's military budget, but they are buying a ton more ships. That is where that money is going. I think it is important to make that point because it is not just money that just goes and floats out and the Federal Reserve tries to find it somewhere. It is going to China, it is going to the Middle East, it is going to OPEC countries. And then we are funding both sides of the war on terror because we are buying all the oil, making them money. It gets back to the terrorists. And then we have a war in the Middle East and we pass almost $500 billion already that we are spending from our side already on the war in Iraq.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks. The President only has a couple years left, Mr. Speaker, and I hope he really uses this as an opportunity to try to reengage Congress and reengage the American people and have some bold initiatives too. And not just the rhetoric. Because we went through and our staffs went true and were comparing everything that the President had said in previous State of the Union addresses and then what the reality is, and you can pick an issue, and we will give you the Web site and you can go and check it all out. So a very skeptical Congress will be here listening tonight. But I hope in regards to health care that we can really focus. Of course, we want everyone covered. But if you think about it, we actually have a universe health care system right now, but it is just run through emergency rooms. It is run in the most inefficient, ineffective way that you could possibly set up a health care system. So it is really not even a system, but it is just health care kind of. What we need to do is try to get some of this investment on the front end, make sure our kids through SCHIP have access to health care, and that we are reaching out and communicating and pulling in people who may qualify for some of these programs but don't actually sign up for them. What is the outreach going to be? Because as we are competing a global economy, as we have talked 1 million times on this floor, we only have 300 million people in the United States of America. We are now competing against China, who has 1.3 billion, India who has a billion, and everyone else on the globe. We only have 300 million. So we have to make our best efforts count, because we need all 300 million on the field playing for us, especially these young kids who are coming up through the ranks. That is why I think it is important when we are talking about the minimum wage and we are talking about making sure that student loan rates are cut in half so we can have more kids go to college, and then we pass the stem cell bill, so we are creating not only a compassionate kind of research that is going to go on and save people's lives and improve their quality of life, but that is creating jobs in a whole new sector of the economy that right now we are not doing exactly what we should be doing. Then we also repeal the corporate welfare and we take the 13 or 14 billion and we are going to pump that into alternative energy, create a whole other sector for alternative energy sources. So you put all this stuff together that we are able to do that, that is bold leadership. These are the kind of initiatives that we really need in the country, and Speaker Pelosi has provided us with that leadership. So I hope in regards to health care, we get some bold tax credits. How about a bold program where all Americans are going to be covered and where we are going to put the money, instead of managed disease, prevent diseases from happening and investing in these young people so that they are healthy, educated and then create opportunity for us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, I appreciate that. This is something you mentioned about being bipartisan and working in a bipartisan way. I think what has happened here has been very successful, and I think this kind of illustrates it. A couple of the things that the Democratic leadership and the Democratic Caucus, with some help from the Republicans on the other side, have been very successful. This is what has happened just in the first 100 hours, should this all become law. You look at the minimum wage being raised. It means $4,400 a year for the average minimum wage worker. So over the next 5 years, the average person will make another $22,000 because of what happened here in this Chamber, led by Speaker Pelosi in a bipartisan way with a handful of Republicans who were able to do that, 80 or 90, I think. College loan interest rates cut over 5 years will save about $1,473. Total earnings and savings for a family over 5 years will be $23,473. This is bread and butter stuff. This is what will be implemented if we can get it through the other side and signed by the President. This is good stuff. This is what we can do in a bipartisan way. So, I think this kind of stuff is important to move the country forward. When we do that, I think we open up a lot of opportunities for a lot of people around the country, and really around the world, because of the opportunity that we would provide here. This is the kind of bipartisan agenda that we want to continue with. We are joined hereby a rising star already making a name for himself down here in Congress, our good friend from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate how the gentleman has been focused on bipartisanship over the past several weeks since we have been here. I agree with my friend from Florida on several issues. Just to go back a few seconds, to talk about what is going on in Iraq and what really the President's plan has been, and I think it is important that we remove this from any kind of partisanship. As we have shown in the past couple weeks here, I mean, the votes that we have passed here have consistently been passed in a bipartisan way. Minimum wage, student loans, Medicare and negotiations, all of these have been passed in a bipartisan way. So the tone that Speaker Pelosi has set in this House has been a tone of bipartisanship. The concern that we have in Iraq at this point with the troop surge is that this President does not have the support of the American people. He does not have the support of the Democratic Party. He is losing support among the Republican Party, and the former Chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, John Warner, has now come out against the President's proposal. The military, for the most part, is against this proposal. It seems like almost everyone who was in the Bush administration who had been in the military under this Commander in Chief and has left is now against what the President is saying. The Iraqi leadership is against it. The only people who are for this is the administration, and I think it is important for us to recognize that we need to get out in a way that makes sure that we retain our dignity and that we redeploy. No one's talking about cutting and running, but redeploy in a responsible way and getting our kids out of harm's way, because this has been botched from the get-go. But I think it is important, and I appreciate you consistently focusing. We have talked for 3\1/2\ or 4 years about if we get in charge we are going to do it in a bipartisan way, and we have been able to maintain that over the past couple of weeks, and I think it is important that we continue to go down that road. If you look at, and I do not want to talk too long because I know my friend has an interest in joining, I want to look at the, Mr. Speaker, first 100 hours, at what we have been able to. Okay. This has kind of gone in two different directions. Pass the minimum wage, reduce student loan interest rates, cut them in half, and allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices. So if you are an average family, those are three major steps forward where you are going to make more money, if you have a minimum- wage worker, where you have less student loans to pay because the interest rate is going to be cut in half, and the prescription drug prices that your parents and grandparents are paying will be a lot less. So that is going to be significant savings in the short term. But now we have our long-term program, and if you look at where the Democratic Party and Speaker Pelosi is pushing our agenda, we have investments into stem cell research, which is something that we passed in this Chamber just a few days ago, that we are going to invest into this new and great and vibrant industry and new sector of our economy that is not only going to reap tremendous health care benefits for our citizens but also provide jobs for our scientists and our researchers and funding the research and development and partnering with private sector people. That is going to create an economic boom in the United States of America because once we pass it, if we can get it past the President, that is going to be a heck of a move on our part. I think it is going to be great for the American people, and it is going to be great for the next generation of people coming out of college and coming out of medical school and getting their Ph.D.s. We are going to have a whole other sector of the economy. In addition to the repealing of the corporate welfare, which I know you had talked a lot about on this floor the past couple of years, repealing the corporate welfare that we gave to the oil companies and the energy companies and putting that money into research for alternative energy sources, creating and pushing a whole other sector of our economy so that we do not depend on the Middle East for our energy, we got it right in the Midwest in the United States of America. So we are stabilizing. We are taking care of people today. We are giving the American people a pay raise, cutting student loan interest rates in half, reducing the cost of prescription drugs now, and then in the future moving into these two major growth areas of alternative energy and stem cell research and into the health care industry. I think Leader Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Clyburn and Mr. Larson and Mr. Emanuel have all set an agenda for the Democrats in the House to do some good in the short term and then to open up these other areas of the economy in the long term. So with that I would be happy to yield back to my good friend, my dear friend from Florida (Mr. Meek).

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the recently completed season and still ongoing career of someone who is an institution in Ohio High School football and the community of Warren, Ohio. Coach Tony Napolet was awarded this year's Coach of the Year award after leading the Warren JFK Eagles to a 14-1 season capped by a berth to the Division 5 State championship game. Although I never had the opportunity to play for him, Coach Napolet has been a friend and mentor throughout my entire adult life. The year following my graduation from Warren JFK, Tony Napolet was brought on for what he anticipated as being a 1-year stint as JFK head coach. That season, after squeaking into the playoffs, Napolet and the Eagles rattled off an amazing run to win the State Championship. At the conclusion of that season Coach Napolet agreed to come back to coach the Eagles indefinitely. He followed his title winning season with another birth to the State championship game. Although Coach Nap and the Eagles suffered a 1-point loss, the 2nd straight appearance in the State championship game solidified Tony Napolet's niche in the upper echelon of Ohio high school football coaches. And that was hardly the twilight of Coach Nap's career. He has since coached the Eagles to numerous winning seasons and three more State semifinal appearances including this past season's appearance in another State championship game. Overall Coach Tony Napolet has garnered three top ten AP rankings, five state semi-final appearances, a winning percentage of .716 during his time at Warren JFK, and an overall coaching record of 191 wins, 84 losses and 3 ties. All of the records, statistics, and awards, however, cannot speak to the influential and inspirational man that is Tony Napolet. One thing that everyone who has ``ever played for Coach Napolet knows is that whether you were the starting quarterback or the third string defensive lineman, you were treated exactly the same. Not only was everyone an equal on the field, but also off the field, mid-season, off-season, and after you had graduated. Tony Napolet is known in the community just as much for what he does for young people after they graduate, as he is for his coaching prowess. Of course there are the typical phone calls to college coaches and recommendation letters, but his involvement in his former players' lives doesn't end there. Coach Napolet is the one who helps you find a summer job when you're home from school, or serves as a reference on an internship application. Since Coach Napolet is such an integral part of the JFK High family, he in turn treats everyone as a member of his family. Tony Napolet is every part of what a high school football coach should be. He realizes and has always realized that the role he plays is not just that of football coach but as someone who is helping prepare young men for the next step in their lives, whether that involves football or not. So, today I am not honoring a coach and his distinct record, but rather a great man who also happens to be a fantastic coach.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentlewoman. Again, raising the minimum wage, cutting student loan interest rates in half, and repealing the corporate subsidies to the oil companies so we can pay for some of this stuff. We are doing some great stuff for the American people, and I want to thank Leader Pelosi. I will kick it to my friend from Pennsylvania to give us the Web site.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I would yield to our good friend from Connecticut.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is making a difference to average families. And over the King holiday, the great thing is to go back and start reading some of the old speeches and the letter from the Birmingham jail where he talked about a sense of urgency. You know: Don't ask us to wait. What are we going to wait for? You go wait. Well, I think that is the attitude Speaker Pelosi and our leadership took, and we didn't wait; we actually implemented this stuff. And when it is all said and done, I think no matter where any of our careers end, whether it is in the next term or retirement or some higher office, we are going to be able to see in our scrapbooks that my Aunt Rita keeps for me, I have a little Aunt Rita who cuts out my clippings and puts them in a little book, but we will be able to look back at all we have done throughout our careers and say, I was here when this all happened. I was in the United States Congress when this all happened. That is special, and that is why we are all so very excited. So I will be happy to yield to my friend from Connecticut.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you. Yes, right over the border from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As I was listening to you talk, and everyone kind of mentioned some different issues. But if you are the average person sitting home and you have all these politicians, Mr. Speaker, making all these political promises and then actually delivering, that in and of itself is a monumental occasion for many people to celebrate. But as I was listening and just thinking, if you are home, it is not just that we have accomplished this, but what the actual effects are when these legislative acts get put into law and signed by the President, if the President, in fact, signs them. He said maybe he was going to veto the minimum wage and the Medicare, but just look at what we have done. We have raised the minimum wage. That is maybe a couple thousand dollars raise for most people. We can talk about the student loan issue, whether it is $2,000 over the course of the loan or $4,000 or $5,000 over the course of the loan, depending on when you get in school. You are talking about maybe $5,000, $6,000, or $7,000 a year that the average family is now going to have at the table that they didn't have a couple years ago when they were trying to do the math and trying to work out their checkbook. Then there is the prescription drug bill. Once that gets implemented and we actually reduce the cost of prescription drugs, that is going to have another significant impact. So they may be working a minimum wage job, or someone in the family may be working a minimum wage job to contribute. You are going to have the student loan rate lowered, and then a reduction in the cost of prescription drugs. That is significant. It is great that we actually did what we said we were going to do, Mr. Meek, and I couldn't agree with your eloquence any more. But the act itself, right down to the kitchen table, Mr. Speaker, this is making a difference.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that, and I welcome Ms. Clarke, the gentlelady from New York. We are going to have some fun. You, gentlemen and lady, have brought some energy and excitement to this Congress. The 100 hours is exciting. It is boom, boom, boom, we passed the ethics. And then we are coming back with the minimum wage, and now we are getting into student loans, real meat-and-potatoes stuff that you all campaigned on, and that we talked about on this floor for hours on end for the last 3\1/2\, 4 years. Now we are actually delivering. Tomorrow is going to be another stellar performance on behalf of Speaker Pelosi and the leaders of the Democratic Congress. Tomorrow we are going to close tax loopholes for oil companies. We are going to close a loophole that gave ConocoPhillips $106 million in 2005 when it got profits of $13.5 billion. Profits of $13.5 billion. They didn't, you know, take it in and then have to dish it out. That is their profit. We stepped up and had the guts to say, and I would like to take more because they are making so much money, but we are going to take $106 million and pay for student loans and health care for young people. We are going to move forward on this agenda. There are a lot of other things that we are going to be able to do. We will do the tax loophole thing. We will roll back the energy bill tax breaks for geological and geophysical expenditures. These are things that may get too technical, but the bottom line is this: The bottom line is that the American people are going to get the kind of representation they need. If you know you are going to go and dig, if you know you are going to go and drill and you know you are going to make enough money, no tax incentive is going to make you want to do it, especially when you are drawing down profits of $15.5 billion. Mr. Speaker, $100 million of public subsidy is not going to make that happen. And then you get into the five royalty relief provisions, this is beautiful, from the 2005 energy bill. This measure will strike the energy bill provisions, suspending royalty fees from oil and gas companies operating in certain deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The interesting thing about this is, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva), a great Member of this body, offered an amendment to strike this provision on April 21 of 2005, and it was defeated by 203-227. We have been trying to do this, and tomorrow is our day where we get to step up and actually deliver on behalf of the American people.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They asked for it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They need it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They want it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think the gentleman's constituents are probably glad to see him back in the district, too. And you would generate a state of euphoria for many folks back home, and yield to our friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate you being so gracious with your time. You mentioned the number 356-71. 71 people in this Chamber voted against cutting student loan interest rates in half. That is the extreme of the extreme in politics today, and that is why I guess you two gentlemen are here joining us, part of the reason anyway, is because that is the kind of extremism, Mr. Speaker, that was running this Chamber for 14 years, and we brought just a wee little bit of sanity to this place. And then a beautiful segue into what we are going to do tomorrow: Tomorrow we are going to start repealing the Big Oil subsidies that have been doled out by the same Congress, and I would guess that you are probably going to get another 70-some Members on the other side that are going to be against repealing these major subsidies tomorrow. Major leases that these folks were getting, one of them gave, Conoco- Phillips gave $106 million back in 2005 as it enjoyed profits totaling $13.5 billion. So you are voting against cutting student loan interest rates in half. You are the ones who plugged in the super wealthy and the super plugged in into a Tax Code that is going to save you $106 million when you are making $13.5 billion. So I am excited about what is happening here because this is a great time where the American people are starting to wrestle back the power that the American people have given us, and we are doing it on behalf of them. I want to yield to the young new Irish Member of Congress.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree 100 percent with the gentleman, except for the fact that everybody knows Penn State. In Ohio, we do not barely recognize them.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to make a point, and we try to distinguish our party from what the previous party has done in that we are getting some feedback from the other side, that we are phasing this thing in and it is not immediate, and we are not doing everything that we could possibly be doing. We are doing a heck of a lot more than they have done. We have done more in the last 3 hours today on the House floor than they have done in the previous 14 years in running this place for average students. So we are not going to take it. We are doing more than they have done, and you know what, if they did not have us at a $400 billion deficit, we would be doing a heck of a lot more. The only constraints we have are the fiscal mess that they left us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. While we were down here, you were probably running through bingo halls and bowling alleys; and Mr. Altmire, who is just across the border from me in western Pennsylvania, I think the impact that you have already had on Congress, you have all spoken on the floor. You all did and have done numerous press events representing our party, and I think you have done a tremendous job. So it is good to have you here with certain expertise, whether it is health care or labor, whatever the issue may be. We have got a very talented freshman class. The reason we are still down here and we just did not quit when the elections were over is that this is about more than just the 100 hours, and we are going to hammer this 100 hours home and get it through and do what the American people asked us to do. But kind of the new energy and spirit that you guys bring is going to move us well past that 100 hours into something that is going to be very special. So I would be happy to yield over to my friend from Pennsylvania right across the border, the same media market.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is not just Democrats. I have not talked to a Democrat yet who thinks that escalating this war is a good idea, and our new direction is not just continuing down the same war with more troops. But I just want to share a few quotes that I did some research on and pulled out that I think are indicative of what's going on here. Colin Powell, as my friend from Florida said earlier, quote: I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work. That is Colin Powell, who basically led us into this mess that we are in. Oliver North said, quote: A surge, or targeted increase in U.S. troop strength, for whatever the politicians want to call dispatching more combat troops to Iraq, isn't the answer. Adding more trainers and helping the Iraqis to help themselves is. Sending more U.S. combat troops is simply sending more targets. That is Oliver North. I found that in Human Events online. Major General Don Shepherd, United States Air Force retired: I would not even consider increasing troop strength in Iraq. Shepherd, who works as a CNN military analyst, offered this analysis of what should be done next after he was briefed by members of the Iraqi Study Group. He wrote, quote: I would not even consider, again, I would not even consider increasing troop strength. And I will give you one more, as we are going through this. Michael Vickers, former Special Forces officer, who said the security situation is inextricably linked to politics. If you can solve some of the Iraqi political problems, the security situation becomes manageable. If you cannot, all the forces in the world aren't going to change that, and I found that on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS of December 12 of 2006. So this is coming from Republicans. This is coming from Democrats. This is coming from people all over the country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate your points. One of the things that we now expressed in the last Congress was having these third-party validators.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I am having a senior moment.