Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As I stated earlier, if Democratic amendments over the course of the past few years, the last 5 years, would have been adopted, there would be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents. There would be 1,400 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration enforcement agents along our borders to help us solve some of these problems. It is a lot like when you invite me out to dinner and you offer to buy me dinner, and then you don't bring your wallet, you know what I mean, and then I end up paying for the dinner. It is just the same thing. You say you are going to provide the Border Patrol agents, and then there is no money there. You invite me to dinner, and then there is no money there. It is pretty much the same thing. Mr. Speaker, as we wrap up here, this is the 30-something Working Group. We are taking e-mails. You can visit us at www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts that you see here, Mr. Speaker, are accessible on that Web page.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity, and I would like to thank Leader Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn and also John Larson, our Vice Chair, the leaders of our caucus, for the opportunity to come down here and speak to other Members of this body about the issues of the day. Day in and day out, as we continue to have debates here on the floor of the House of Representatives, one of the main topics here and back in our districts is the issue of the war in Iraq, the issue of the standing, on the stature of the United States of America and the opinion of those around the world of us, and the need for us to build coalitions across the globe in order to fight this global war on terror. We have major differences. We have had major differences, and we continue to have major differences in this body, in the body that is created by Article I, section 1 of the United States Constitution, as to how we should administer and execute this war on terror. The Bush administration has tried to implement their philosophy with the war in Iraq, and I must say, Mr. Speaker, that their actions have created more terrorists in the world, it has made the bull's eye on the United States bigger, and it has completely almost eliminated the goodwill that was given to this country from around the globe after 9/ 11. Many Members of this Chamber can remember the editorials and foreign newspapers where some were saying that today we are all Americans after 9/11. Today we are all Americans. That political capital that we had, that goodwill that we had, was squandered by a very divisive policy, a policy that was based on misinformation, was misleading. As the days and the weeks and the months go by, we continue to see time and time and time again how this administration misled the Congress and misled the American people. And if we had a huge intelligence failure on 9/11, it only makes sense to be very, very careful before believing the intelligence that is then being presented to you for the war in Iraq. This issue is the defining issue. The President can continue to try, Mr. Speaker, to somehow change the topic, somehow try to change the debate to something that may be more favorable. But when you look at what is happening with our foreign policy and with our domestic policy, you will see that the American people are moving in a direction away from the President of the United States. They no longer, as Mort Zuckerman said, they no longer give the President the benefit of the doubt. And when the President loses the benefit of the doubt, the President loses the kind of authority and persuasive nature, basic nature of the office. So let's talk about what is going on here. This war in Iraq has made us less safe. It has given us more terrorists in the world. It has increased the polarization. And if you look just on the front page where we have the President being called a devil, which I don't necessarily agree with, being called a devil at the United Nations, now, we can all at least say that that kind of rhetoric, although it is not helpful, signals the kind of discontent that there is out there in the world for the United States of America. When you are fighting a global war on terror, Mr. Speaker, you need friends. You need people who are going to help you. You need assistance from all quarters, whether you are a Democrat or whether you are a Republican, whether you are a Member of the United States Congress or you are a member of a parliament in Europe or South America. You need help. We can't fight this global war on terror by ourselves, so we need to engage the international community. We need to engage the international community. I want to share with the American people some of what is going on. We are going to start with what is going on with the money. We can see here what the war in Iraq is currently costing the American taxpayers, $8.4 billion per month. It is costing the American people, this war on terror, $1.9 billion per week, $275 million per day, $11.5 million per hour. This is to fund what is going on in Iraq. And this has basically put us in the middle of a civil war. Only about 7 percent of the fighters in Iraq are al Qaeda types. The rest are Sunni and Shia, and they are fighting with each other, with the American soldiers right in the middle of the mix. We found out 2 weeks ago that Secretary Rumsfeld said that he would fire the next person who asked for a post-war plan. Now, Mr. Speaker, we can agree and disagree on a lot of things here, but when you have the Secretary of Defense say to some of his underlings that the next person that asks me about a post-war plan will be fired, that goes right to the heart of the leadership of the Pentagon, the leadership of the Defense Department. How do you go into a war with no post-war plan? This was a mistake to begin with. And then at the end of the day you start hearing about all the ties between al Qaeda and Iraq that didn't end up to be true. Then you find out the Secretary of Defense didn't want anybody to submit any kind of post-war plan at all to him, or the next one that did would be fired. It goes to the question of what kind of leadership are we getting here. And when you have this cowboy diplomacy that we have had for years in the United States of America, you know, the ``Axis of Evil'' comments, and ``we are going to smoke them out,'' and ``bring it on,'' and ``mission accomplished,'' and you have major magazines saying it is the end of cowboy diplomacy, well, when you look at the comments of some of the foreign leaders, calling the President of the United States a devil, it doesn't seem like they think this is the end of cowboy diplomacy. So we have all got to move forward on this issue, Mr. Speaker, and we have got to somehow figure out together how we are going to do this. One of the things that the Democrats want to do when we take over the House in January is to start having some hearings, to start providing some oversight. If we could get that quote from Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich, the former Speaker, the man who led the Republican revolution in 1994, said in the Wall Street Journal column he wrote a couple of weeks ago that the only way to begin to fix this is to have an honest assessment of what is going right and what is going wrong in the intelligence, NSA, the war in Iraq. But if we don't have an honest assessment, if we don't have honest hearings, and we get briefed every now and again from the Secretary of Defense and it is not helpful. It doesn't make any sense. And we continue to go down this road, to stay the course. Here is what Speaker Gingrich is saying to us on staying the course. This is from the Wall Street Journal, September 7: ``Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.'' This is Newt Gingrich saying that this has been a real failure in leadership on the war on terrorism. Then you come back to homeland security. You come back to what are we doing here at home with the ports, with the immigration issue, with what the Democrats want to do compared to what the Republicans want to do. If you look at what we were able to accomplish under President Clinton compared to what has gone on with President Bush, this is just border security numbers, Mr. Speaker, the average number of new Border Patrol agents added per year. In the Clinton administration, 642. New border agents per year under the Bush administration, 411. Under the Clinton administration, we actually increased the number of Border Patrol agents much more so, by 230-some a year more than the Republicans have under the Bush administration. Immigration, INS fines for immigration enforcement. In 1999, 417 under President Clinton. Only three in 2004 under President Bush. The Clinton administration was much more aggressive on the Border Patrol issue. There were 78 percent fewer completed immigration fraud cases by the Bush administration. Look, in 1995, 6,455, and 1,389 in 2003 under the Bush administration. If you look at what we followed as the immigration debate here in Congress has raged, you will see that if Democratic amendments, the amendments that we tried to get on over the last 5 years, would have succeeded, there would be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents, 14,000 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration enforcement agents along our borders than now exist. It is clear that the Democratic Party doesn't only provide the rhetoric, but we provide the solutions necessary to try to solve some of these problems. Day in and day out, as we continue to have this debate, we can talk about it, or we can put our money where our mouth is and fund these Border Patrol agents. We can make sure that more than 6 percent of the cargo that comes in and out of the United States is checked for weapons of mass destruction, and for illegal immigrants, for that matter. We have to do this, and we have to be willing to put the resources necessary into the programs. That means that there are going to be some difficult decisions, because over the last few years we have seen the budget in the United States of America go bust, billions and billions and billions of dollars wasted, billions given to the pharmaceutical industry, billions given to the oil industry, to corporate welfare. If we don't begin to change that, if we don't begin to put in some basic structural changes to the way the budget process works by putting in PAYGO rules, by making sure you can't spend money that you don't go get somewhere else so you don't have to borrow it. And that is what is happening right now. I must commend, Mr. Speaker, Senator Voinovich from Ohio, who is talking about waking up the Congress to say we have got to balance our budgets. We have to, because we have two options. We can ask the top 1 percent of the people in this country, the top 1 percent wage earners, people who make more than $1 million a year, we can either ask them to contribute their fair share, and they have benefited greatly over the last couple of years, and use some of that to help us reduce our budget deficits. We either ask them to help, or we borrow the money from China and Japan. Those are really our two options. Over the past few years we have been borrowing the money from China, we have been borrowing the money from Japan, and it puts us at a tremendous weakness when we have to go to China and ask them for help with North Korea, when we have to go to China and ask them for help in Iraq, when we have to go to China and ask them for help with Russia. All of a sudden we are going to the bank that is lending us money and asking them to help us with our diplomacy. I don't care if you are a liberal or a conservative, the United States has always prided itself on making sure we balanced our budgets. In 1993 in this Chamber, controlled by the Democrats, without one Republican vote, we balanced the budget. 20 million new jobs. Economic expansion that benefited everyone. Welfare roles decreased and declined. Then we look at what this President and this Congress has done. In the last 4 or 5 years, this President and a Republican-controlled Congress has borrowed more money from foreign interests than any other President before him. So 224 years, Mr. Speaker, all of the Presidents added up did not borrow as much as President Bush has borrowed. So we have a solution, Mr. Speaker, that is not a Democratic solution or a Republican solution. It seems to be based on reality, and, Mr. Speaker, this is the advice that Mr. Gingrich has given on the broken system in Washington. He said in the Washington Post in July, ``The correct answer,'' Gingrich said, ``is for the American people to just start firing people.'' And I think that is about the sentiment in the United States right now is that the American people are ready for new leadership. When you think about what Mr. Gingrich is saying, and you read his Wall Street Journal articles, and you read his books, and you think about what he is saying, in 1994, when the Republican Congress came in and the Republican revolution, and you think about what was said and how many times, and it was masterful campaigning, about we need to run the government like a business, we need to balance the budget, we need to make government more efficient, there is too much waste, there is too much fraud, there is too much abuse, and if we just squeeze the government, we are going to be able to get the kind of resources that we need to fund the programs that we need and give tax cuts and some relief to the American people; and if you look now, in 2006, as to what the Republican majority has done with that opportunity that the American people gave them, it is really a shame because we have huge budget deficits. We are borrowing money from foreign interests. The government is fat and bloated and bureaucratic, and we lose $9 billion in Iraq, and nobody really knows or seems to care as to where it goes. You have all this pay to play going on. You have a K Street Project going on, started by the Republican Party, that basically says if you are a lobbyist and you want us to help you, if you want the Republican Party to help you, you need to hire my ex-chief of staff to run your lobby organization, and then you will have access. When you look at the money, the public money that is being spent on corporate welfare, $12-, $13-, $14-, $15 billion to the energy companies, that is not a real record to be proud of. When you talk about running the government like a business, and you look at the waste and you look at the bloatedness and you look at the government's inability to address two, at least, of the major responsibilities that we all could agree on here, and that is national defense and emergency response. The national defense side, look at the war in Iraq. This great Republican revolution gives the power and the responsibility to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and then does not take that responsibility away, then does not demand that they get fired, but they promote him. Wolfowitz is now at the World Bank, and Rumsfeld, no one will dare disappoint him, Mr. Speaker. This is the architect of one of the great catastrophes in the history of the United States of America. No one's been fired. I run into business people, hard-core conservative Republican business people in my district, and they say, if I was running the business, Rumsfeld would have been fired 2 years ago. This is not a partisan issue, but you have to provide oversight. It is not about putting your party before the country, and that is what is happening now, and no one will admit it, this stay the course, bury your head in the sand and somehow forget about the reality that is happening on the ground. When you see time and time again, time and time again, generals that leave and retire and then all of the sudden have a lot to say about what is going on on the ground, and they have a lot of opinions about what is happening in the administration because no one was being listened to, first it was not enough troops, then how it had to change on the ground and the lack of responsiveness. That is not running government like a business. That is not responding to the market in the case of Iraq. That is ignoring the facts on the ground to benefit yourself politically. That is putting the Republican Party ahead of the Republic, and it does not work that way. Sometimes you make mistakes and you get egg on your face. It does not mean you go get a new banner printed or a new slogan printed. It means you admit it, and you go forward. Let us have hearings. I am fortunate enough, Mr. Speaker, to sit on the Armed Services Committee. The brainpower on that committee, the kind of experience of Members on that committee, is tremendous, and it has been one of the nonpartisan committees for the most part. Why not go before this committee? Let us let all these people who have traveled the world, who have been involved in the war in 1990, people like Mr. Murtha who are on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, sit down with these people. Let us figure this out, and someone may get some egg on their face, and someone may have to be fired, but if the team's not performing, you may have to cut a few people. You may have to move some positions. You do not promote them. And you look and see what these generals are saying. ``Rumsfeld and his team turned what should have been a deliberate victory into a prolonged challenge,'' John Batiste in the National Journal, chief military aide to Paul Wolfowitz, brigade commander in Bosnia. Anthony Zinni: ``We're paying the price for the lack of credible planning or the lack of a plan. Ten years worth of planning were thrown away.'' How can you have lack of planning in a major war? Again, we are not talking about a Rotary Club building a river walk. We are not talking about a Kiwanis group in our local community putting flowers in a courthouse square. We are talking about going to war. We are talking about the most deliberate act that a government can make, that we are going to put our soldiers in harm's way. There are probably going to be innocent lives that are going to be killed, and we are going to kill other people, and now we have these generals saying we did not have a plan. That is the height of irresponsible leadership. You look at what General Charles Swannack, Jr., said: ``I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.'' That was in the New York Times in April. This is not the Democratic Caucus saying this. This is not me. Look at what another general said: ``If I was President, I would have relieved him 3 years ago.'' This is someone who has got the Bronze Star medal with Combat V, Silver Star medal with gold star, Legion of Merit. These are well-respected people in the military establishment saying we need to get rid of Rumsfeld, which I think would be a great gesture to the international community to say we have made a lot of mistakes. Maybe we can be a bit humble and say that and ask for help and say that we need to make this a global effort. If you have this kind of irresponsible behavior, this lack of self- awareness to say that we have made some mistakes and we want to go about fixing them I think disrespects the process here, and quite frankly, it disrespects the American people. To try to pitch this al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein pie, when we find out that Saddam did not want to help al Qaeda at all, when you see that, and then yet you continue to ignore the facts on the ground, Mr. Speaker, it only puts us in a deeper hole and makes things more difficult. So the war side has not been executed like a business because we have not changed, we have not streamlined. And you look at the wasted money on contracts and the amount of money some of these big donors have made, the war profiteering, again, a slap in the face to the American people. Then domestically when you look at Katrina and a lot of the emergency response problems that we had, we find out again that this government really was not run like a business, that this emergency response system was not streamlined because we had Wal-Mart and we had some of these other businesses, they were getting water and supplies in and out. Their response was much better, much more efficient, much more effective than the Federal Government's. But it is the Federal Government's responsibility to make sure that we can address these national and natural disasters that happen in the United States of America. That is our responsibility. That is our constitutional obligation. So it is very important that we figure out how to streamline that. Where are the hearings? Where is the oversight? Where is the accountability? There is not any. And then when you talk about the bloatedness of government, I want to share with you, Mr. Speaker, and the other Members of this body about one of the great proposals that we have here and that the Democrats will offer in January when we take over this Chamber. Those are two bills, one by Representative Tanner from Tennessee and one by Representative Cardoza from California. These bills say that we are going to run an audit, a real audit, of the Federal Government, and we are going to squeeze this government. We are going to make it fit an information-, knowledge-based economy, and we are not going to sit back and just allow the bureaucracy to grow and grow and grow and keep feeding the beast and just say if we write a bigger check, somehow the problem will go away. You cannot fix it without providing some auditing and then the reform necessary. The programs that do not work, we get rid of. The programs that work, we fund them, and we fund them by squeezing the waste and the bureaucracy out of some of these other programs, and making sure that every dollar that we get from the taxpayer is spent well and accounted for. What I like most about these two bills is that we are going to hold the Secretaries of the departments accountable, and so if there is an audit, and recommendations are made, then the Secretary, the CEO of that department, will be held accountable. If they do not meet the requirements of that audit, that Secretary will have to go back to the Senate to get confirmed again. That is accountability. That is saying no matter who you are, whether you are Secretary Rumsfeld or you are Secretary of Health and Human Services, if the GAO audits you, a real audit, and we make sure that we know that the facts are right, and you do not meet the requirements of that audit, then you will have to go back for a reconfirmation. That is how you get change in these huge bureaucracies, and that is what the Democrats are going to do, because if we do not reform this government, if we do not get it ready and able to move us into an information-, knowledge-based economy, we are going to continue to fall behind because we do not have the resources. We cannot keep going back to the taxpayer, asking them for more money and more money and more money, because they do not have it. Now, if you look at what is going on, why they do not have it and the squeeze that the average people are going through now, look at this. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. Real household income has declined nearly $1,300 under the Bush administration. So you are making $1,300 less. The cost of family health insurance has skyrocketed 71 percent since Bush took office. And if you look, the cost of tuition and fees at a 4-year public university has exploded by 57 percent. These are facts. These are not made up. So hourly wages are down 2 percent, consumer confidence is down, gas prices are up 20 percent, and mortgage debt is up 97 percent since the year 2000. We can't keep going back to these people and asking them for more and more money. And the unfunded mandates that are coming from this Congress down to the States and the local tax burden is being increased for mental health levies, for library levies, for community development projects, and these cities and many of them, and one of them is one I represent, Youngstown, another one Akron in Ohio, these cities don't have the resources. And if we are going to compete as a country, you have got to look at it like this: right now it is much different. Cities like Youngstown, cities like Akron, northeast Ohio, Cleveland, we are not longer competing with each other, and we are no longer competing with New York and Chicago. We are all now competing in a global economy. And as we compete in this global economy, as regions and as a country, we have got to recognize that we only have 300 million people in the United States of America. And when you compare that to the 1.3 billion people in China and the billion people in India, you will see that we have got to be at the top of our game because we only have 300 million people. And when we have many of those people living in poverty, and Cleveland is now rated the poorest city in the entire country. I see Mrs. Tubbs Jones is here who represents that area. With the poverty rates in Youngstown and all of these cities where 80 percent of the kids who go to some of these schools qualify for a free and reduced lunch. And their nutrition levels go down in the summertime when the school lunch programs and those kind of things that are offered, breakfast programs, aren't available in the summer. So how are we going to be ready, Mrs. Tubbs Jones, to compete in a global economy when we are not making the proper investments here at home? I yield to my friend from Ohio (Mrs. Jones)

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you so much. It is an honor to have you down here with us. We come here a lot, and to be graced with your presence, I think it is important what the leader said about what we can do not within the first 100 days, but within the first 100 hours. They are some very basic, simple steps. We talk about just the average person, what changes will happen in their own lives if their student loan rates are cut in half and the minimum wage is raised within the first 100 hours. That is a significant impact on people around the country. It is not that we are going to wave some magic wand, but we are going to do the people's business. With the gentlewoman's leadership, it is going to be an exciting time. Mr. Speaker, you see excitement among Democrats about some alternatives. We have some challenges, but any time you challenge the American people, they seem to step up. I know Ms. Pelosi will provide us with that leadership.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As you were talking, and we have all reviewed the Constitution, one of the things I found very interesting as I was reading this is the very beginning, the ``We the people'' paragraph. `` . . . in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,'' and then this last little phrase here hit me: ``provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.'' The general welfare. Not the special interest groups, not the oil companies, not the energy companies, not the pharmaceutical companies, but the general welfare, Mr. Speaker. And that is what we are here to do is provide for the general welfare. And I think next year in January, when we agree as a caucus to elect a Member of this Chamber, an elected Member in Ms. Pelosi, we can move in that direction, our constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare. www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts and the rubber stamp and everything are on the Web site for people to access. HouseDemocrats.gov/30something.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Let me finish, Mr. Meek, because the bottom line is this, here is the cost: $8.4 billion per month, $1.9 billion per week in Iraq, $275 million per day in Iraq, $11.5 million per hour in Iraq. If this is the legacy of the Bush administration, you know what? If I was in the White House, I wouldn't want to talk about this either. I would talk about anything possible other than this fact. You want to start talking about providing health care for millions of citizens? You want talk about lower tuition costs? You want to talk about investing in alternative energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? You want to talk about what Mr. Mica wants to do with airline security and port security? We have got the money. We have got the money. But we are spending it in a black hole called Iraq.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And let's be honest here, Mr. Speaker. This is a joke because this is about 84 percent of America's top national security experts saying we are losing the war in Iraq. This is about all these generals that we have been showing night in and night out saying there is no plan to get out of here, there was a bad plan to get in, there was a bad plan to start with. There was no plan, bad information, bad intelligence, nothing was right. Look back at everything they said about using the oil for reconstruction money, about being greeted as liberators, about all this nonsense that we heard before. This is an opportunity for this administration, Mr. Meek, to try to change the subject. And all of a sudden we are talking about a few political prisoners, and it has enormous ramifications. But the bottom line is this: This administration wants to talk about anything but the war and the economy. They want to change the subject anytime they get a chance to. And now we have got this debate about military prisoners. And I am not saying it is not important, but my God, you have got millions of people living in poverty. You have got seniors whom you are threatening with their Medicare. You have got 40 some million people with no health insurance. You have stagnant wages. You have gas prices going up. You have health care going up. You have tuition going up. You have poverty rates going up. You have got veterans' benefits going down. And you want to talk about this one little sliver to change the subject, and you are coming up with all these new phrases again, ``Islamofascism'' and all this other stuff.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. John McCain, who has actually been through it, the most well-known political prisoner in our country's history, now, given the modern media today and the kind of fame that he has generated, says that this is a bad thing for our soldiers. This isn't about anyone else's soldiers. This is about our soldiers. You want to be promilitary? You want to be pro-U.S. soldier? You want to protect our soldiers? You failed them on body armor. You failed them with a plan to get out. And now if they get caught, you are going to say there are no international standards in which we can hold these other countries by, and you will be able to do anything you want to the American soldiers. Now, we know there are rogue people, but there are many people who will get political prisoners and actually abide by the rules. We know there are some that won't. But to go against John McCain and to go against a JAG officer like Lindsey Graham, and to go against Mr. Warner, Chair of the Armed Services Committee, who has been in for years.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is the result for my trying to impress Tom Osborne.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentlewoman would yield, last night's injury has now relegated me to yoga and golf. So I have changed my future. At 33 years old, I am now limited to different forms of yoga and improving my golf game. No basketball. No baseball. In fact, last night Mr. Meek, as he drove me from the field to the locker room and almost to the hospital, said this morning when he picked me up to take me to the gym, he said, ``I have your spikes in my car.'' And I said, ``You can burn them because I am never going to need them again.''

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, last year we raised $50,000 for a trust fund for the kids of these families. This year we raised $30,000, so there will be $80,000. Hopefully we can raise more in the next couple of years. I am not necessarily saying I will play in the game next year. I will be happy to write a check, but to make sure that there is a trust fund there for all of these kids, I think we should eventually expand it to all of Capitol Police who get killed in the line of duty protecting us and protecting this Capitol. I think it is important. I didn't really want to bring it up, but our coach for the team is Tom Osborne, the former great coach of the University of Nebraska. He was our coach, and I was an old quarterback. So if Tom Osborne is my coach, I am going to try to impress him.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you just look at what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) has said, ``Unfortunately, Congress is not ready to face the reality of the problem.'' He is talking about airline security. That is not us. That is not Democrats saying it. Republicans now are saying it, Newt Gingrich, generals, Republicans, Bill Buckley. I mean, come on, they are all saying this, that they are not addressing the need of the problem.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I made it to the third quarter.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Because it comes down to this, that this is another, I think, election year situation. But the bottom line is this: We opt out of the Geneva Convention, and we make a certain set of rules to say how military prisoners should be treated, just because if we do that, we have a certain set of standards, it does not mean other countries won't opt out, and their standards will be a heck of a lot lower than our standards.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Nobody wants to us to do it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If I may inject here, the last attack, the attack prior to 9/11, was in 1993. This is a very patient group. Just because we haven't been hit yet does not mean we are executing the plan properly. And to just dismiss the 9/11 report and continue down the road of ignoring what the experts are telling us from Iraq and from everything else puts us in a certain amount of danger. And you have the charts that we have shown night after night that are on our Web site, housedemocrats.gov/30something, night in and night out, about the ports and the amount of ships coming in and cargo that are coming in that are not checked, Mr. Meek. You guys are in Florida, we have Lake Erie in Ohio. I mean, this country is surrounded by cargo coming in and out of our ports, for us not to check it all. And then, when you think about what we are spending in Iraq, $2 billion a week, $8 billion a month, and what we could do with that money on addressing the issue of our ports, on our homeland security, on our first responders, on making sure everyone has the proper radios and the proper equipment to coordinate these kind of things; what we could do with technology at the borders, at our airports, the retinal scans, and all kinds of things that could spring up and even have some economic stimulus. What economic stimulus are we getting out of Iraq right now? Nothing. Nothing. It is like putting money and just flushing it. And so I think it is time, and I yield to my friend, but I think it is time that we start straightening this out

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And let us look at the colossal failure that has been made here. We have now, because of the decimation in Iraq and the inability of a post-war plan that Rumsfeld didn't want anyone to talk about, and not propping up some government there to combat Iran, now you have Iran as the major player in this region. And they are talking about nuclear weapons, they are funding terrorists through the back door in Iraq through Hamas. Through all of the terrorist organizations in the Middle East, Iran is the one stoking this fire. We have put ourselves in such a position of weakness. Now, we have troops there and troops in Afghanistan, too, so what if something else happens? And I think it is interesting, and our ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Skelton, has been talking about this for a long time, and it is difficult to even fathom this, but one-half of all Army units, deployed and nondeployed, Active and Reserve, one-half of all Army units received the lowest readiness rating any fully formed unit can receive, with a decline in levels that haven't been seen since Vietnam. So our army is not ready. Not only are we in a quagmire in Iraq, we have problems in Afghanistan, the poppy crop is growing like gang busters, it is a major parts of their underground economy that is going to the terrorists, now our army is not meeting the readiness capabilities in case something else happens. And we are in a position of weakness with China because we are borrowing billions of dollars from them, so how do you negotiate with all these people from a position of weakness? You can't. It has been America that has always balanced the budgets so we didn't have to borrow money from people; very selective in our foreign policy; making sure we had friends and allies. All down the tubes in one presidency. Yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to share as we end here from the Newt Gingrich commentary from the Wall Street Journal where he talks about some of this stuff, about trying to figure out what the solutions are by figuring or understanding what the problems are. Then he talks about, and this is his advice to George Bush, ``Then he should announce an honest review of what has not worked in the first 5 years of the war.'' That is what we have been saying. Let's find out what has not been working. Based on the findings, he should initiate a sweeping transformation of the White House national security apparatus. Good idea. The current hopelessly slow and inefficient interagency system should be replaced by a new metrics-based and ruthlessly disciplined integrated system of accountability. That is what we want to do. Accountability. Let's sit down and have hearings and figure this out. The House of Representatives has a role to play in this oversight. The President should insist upon creating a new, aggressive, entrepreneurial national security system. It is time to do this. Following this initiative, the President should propose a dramatic and deep overhaul of homeland security grounded in metrics-based performance to create a system capable of meeting the seriousness of the threat. This is about reforming the institution of government. The former Speaker understands it. The Democratic Party understands it, and the only people who seem not to get it are the people who serve in this administration and the high levels of this Congress. I hope it changes. All of the charts that we are using tonight are available on this website, www.House Democrats.gov/30Something. It has been an enjoyable evening once again.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Supplement.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Come in.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The debate coming out of D.C. and the old Potomac two-step is, ``We'll blame the Democrats.'' What are you going to blame the Democrats for? We have bills sitting in committee. No one has given them even one hearing in a committee. We have got discharge petitions sitting over here for veterans benefits and all kinds of other things. They never see the light of day. We are the minority party. You can't blame us. You can try, but you can't blame us. Take responsibility for your actions. And if you solve problems, the American people would return you back. But you haven't. Just look. The failure to execute basic governmental programs. Look at homeland security. Look at Katrina. Look at the war. You got Newt Gingrich, the father of the Republican revolution in 1994, basically saying, ``Vote the Republicans out.'' Here is what Speaker Gingrich said in the Wall Street Journal just a couple of days ago. Just consider the following, he says: ``Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.'' This is not a Democrat. This is someone who cares about his country and saying, ``We may even disagree on how to fix the problem, but can we please admit that we have got some serious problems in 2006 in the United States of America? We have a government that doesn't work because it thinks the government is built on a concept of an economy that was 1950. It doesn't work.'' This is from a few months ago, about the Republican majority. ``They are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.'' We don't need to make this up. We don't need to create this. This is not fiction. This is about what is happening here. We come down here, Mr. Speaker, because we want to start solving these problems. When we are not included in the debate, you are basically saying half of the country has no solutions. Well, we have solutions. When we get in charge next year, we are going to show the American people our ability to govern. We are not trying to obstruct. We couldn't even obstruct if we wanted to. All we are saying is, every single aspect of the neoconservative political agenda has been implemented and it is not benefiting the American people. Look at your energy costs. Look at your health care costs. Look at your tuition costs. Look at your tax burden. Look at the inefficiency of government. Look at how your government responds to natural disasters. Look how your government handles its foreign policy. Look at the prewar plan. When you have a problem with your political system and your leadership, when you have the Secretary of Defense. Just think about this. There is a problem when the Secretary of Defense wants to invade a country and doesn't want anyone around him talking about how we are going to get out once the war is over. We have got the best military machine the planet has ever seen. We knew we were going to march right to Baghdad. We didn't know it was going to be as quick as it was but we knew it would be quick. Certainly the Iraqis weren't going to be able to stop us. And then the Secretary of Defense, used to be called the Secretary of War, the same position. But the Secretary of Defense tells everyone around him that we're not allowed to talk about a postwar plan. What? Mr. Speaker, that is crazy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate the gentleman's passion and want to thank you for inviting me to be down here with you again. I think what you are trying to say is that this Congress, this President, has really put us and the American people in a lose-lose situation. Good Presidents and a good Congress do not put the American people and their military operation in a lose-lose situation. And now they have reverted back to just saying, Democrats don't care about national security. Democrats are more in favor of protecting the terrorists. Just name calling. It is like you are on the playground again. The thing that we have to look at is the record. The record does not lie. And what the generals are telling the civilian side what to do and the civilian side not listening, as you expressed earlier. But here is what we are hearing from former generals who, once they get out, can all of a sudden start speaking the truth. Like General Shinseki tried to say to Rumsfeld, ``You've got to send in a few hundred thousand troops.'' And Secretary Rumsfeld, Mr. Speaker, said, ``No, no, no. Don't worry. We can do this on the cheap.'' Rumsfeld was wrong and Shinseki all of a sudden kind of disappears. Look what is happening now. Lieutenant General Newbold: ``What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures.'' This man was the top operations officer for the Joint Chiefs, commanding general for the First Marine Division, Legion of Merit Navy and Marine Corps commendation medal. How about General Eaton: ``2\1/2\ more years of that leadership was too long for my Nation, for my Army and for my family.'' These are generals. How about General Riggs: ``They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda.'' I think what we want to do, Mr. Speaker, is get out of the politics and let's start solving problems. Seven hundred thousand people per Congressal district vote for us to come down here and fix problems, not to play politics with what is going on. And this has been all politics, all the time, from this administration. It doesn't matter if what they are saying is even remotely close to being based in reality. It doesn't matter what the facts on the ground are. You can sit here and say, the Democrats this and the Democrats that. You're in charge of the House, the Senate and the White House. Don't go blame the minority party for your failures. That is what has happened here. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to share a couple of other of these quotes that support what you are saying. Here is from General Batiste: ``Rumsfeld and his team turned what should have been a deliberate victory in Iraq into a prolonged challenge.'' General Zinni: ``We are paying the price for the lack of credible planning or the lack of a plan. Ten years' worth of planning were thrown away.'' How about General Swannack: ``I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.'' That was from the New York Times in April. And on and on and on. But here is the point I want to make before we yield to our other good friend from Florida about just not listening and not even accepting facts presented by nonpartisan people. The 9/11 Commission was a bipartisan group that said you need to implement these. After months and months of study on what happened on 9/11, this is what you need to implement. And it has not been done. And then the Senate Intelligence Committee comes out and says there was no tie between Saddam and al Qaeda, and yet the administration goes out and continues to perpetuate falsehoods. Excuse me, but, I mean, come on. It was the Senate Intelligence Committee report, and the Senate is controlled by Republicans. That was basically a Republican report and a nonpartisan report, and yet they continue to just go on and say things that just don't match with reality. I yield to my friend from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentlewoman would yield, so you are saying and it is fact that there is not anyone who believes that there was any connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda except for the two or three main leaders of this administration, period.