Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate you cutting your answer short. I agree with you wholeheartedly. If we don't recognize and understand from A to Z what needs to be done in reforming the Government to make sure that we can respond to the needs of our constituents, we are in the service industry down here. We administer programs and we regulate commerce and we take care of foreign policy and we build a military, raise a military, raise an army. We have that obligation. I commend you for your passion and your support and your ideas which do not go unnoticed. But it is so important for us to recognize when we get down here, the few decisions that we will make immediately will have an immediate impact on the lives of every American. By auditing the Government and by going back to make sure that we can figure out how Government needs to look and run and be administered and executed in the 21st century based on an economy that is based on knowledge and information and science, not necessarily industry and huge steel companies and huge auto companies and big bureaucracies were needed to combat and administer and lift people up. I think to a certain extent we need to maintain those principles, but at the same time Government needs to change. There are so many programs that have really been frustrating, Mr. Speaker, that we have seen funding reined in on, the programs that will ultimately lead to economic development: the manufacturing extension program, the Small Business Administration 7(a) loan program. These are the kind of things that local economic development folks can use. We need to focus on how we export goods out of this country. We have been playing a lot of defense and I think the resentment that you feel in places like Ohio and Indiana and Pennsylvania and the old industrial Midwest is not that there is change, but the country has the wherewithal to pass free trade agreements and begin to compete in a global economy; but at the same time, we haven't done anything at home to make sure that we have adequate skilled workers that will be able to be employed or create wealth in this new society and which we can export and create wealth with business incubators, with job retraining. Why is it so difficult for us to get some of these workers from the auto industry or the steel industry or wherever it may be into the health care industry? We have a nursing shortage on one hand. We have job reductions in many other industries. What is the problem? We need 3 million health care workers in the next decade or so. We need a million new nurses in the next decade or so. Government needs to be nimble enough and flexible enough where we could make sure that we address these issues. Not because we want to do it for the sake of the Government but because we want to do it because it is going to be good for the overall economy. It is going to be good. The more nurses, the more doctors, the healthier we are going to be. The more general sense we have about wellness and community health clinics and putting clinics in our schools and wellness programs and intramural programs and after- school programs, these ultimately lead to healthier, more educated, more productive citizens which means increased value, more wealth creation and ultimately a strong America so that we can deal with all of these complex problems in the world, not from a position of weakness. I think what you showed with your map, with all the different countries and the debt that is owed and the net interest that we are paying on the debt, we are now in a position of weakness. We need help with North Korea and we go to our bank, China, and ask them for help. You can't negotiate from a position of weakness. That is what we are doing right now. So we don't get any help with North Korea. We need help with Iran and some of these other countries. Everyone who is loaning us money says, go take a hike. And we hear the utter disrespect that Vladimir Putin showed, not our President but our country, because our President is representing all of us, all 300 million, when he goes to the G-8 summit. And to have Vladimir Putin basically say, no thanks, we don't want the kind of democracy that you're trying to push in Iraq, that is disrespecting the United States of America. When you look at how people are viewing us around the world, it becomes very, very difficult to try to promote the kind of values that we all believe in and try to maintain our strength here at home.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You know what Mr. Tanner's bill says, it is our bill, it says that if you are the Secretary of the Department and you cannot pass these audits, then after a couple of years, you have got to come back before the United States Senate and you have got to get confirmed again because you are not doing your job. We are trying to run a government that is based, it looks like it is 1950, but society has moved forward. Society has decentralized, and the Republican Congress, they are like dinosaurs that just do not recognize the changes that have come in the world and have not done the due diligence necessary to reform government. I mean, you can say, well, here is the Democrats making this up again. We do not have to make anything up. Look how FEMA worked with Katrina. Look at how after the military portion of the war in Iraq, look at how we have done after that, not only losing money but not achieving the objective, not really having an objective, to having a big problem there, too. As Newt Gingrich said last week on Meet the Press, with all that is going on around the world, our bureaucracies do not have the capabilities of handling all these situations. State Department, Pentagon, Department of Defense, all of these. Come on. We need to reform this government and we don't have time to wait. Because if there is going to be a terrorist attack in the United States of America, it is not going to be like Katrina where we have 5 days where we could watch it on the Weather Channel and know it is coming. This government needs reformed and it needs reformed immediately and that means getting to the bottom of things. That means getting all the facts necessary. That means calling hearings. What that also means, Mr. Meek, is that some people are going to get embarrassed. Maybe people just need to come before Congress and say, ``Mr. Meek, under this system, no one could do this job.'' Maybe that is the case. I will give you the benefit of the doubt. You appointed equestrian attorneys and all this other stuff to key positions. Yes, there has been a lot of cronyism here, let's not make any mistake about it. And it cost lives and money during Katrina, bottom line. But at the same time, maybe there are good people, hardworking Americans, that want to serve their government that are trapped in a bureaucracy that was designed in the 1930s or 1940s or 1950s and has stayed there and they can't work within this bureaucracy. Have the decency and the guts to try to reform it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And the bottom line with the minimum wage is that the increase in the minimum wage is good for the economy. In 1997, when it was raised, there were 11 million new jobs that were created after the increase in the minimum wage, 11 million new jobs. States that have a higher minimum wage than the Federal minimum wage have an increase in business start-ups, an increase in sales, retail sales, because it is a different philosophy. It puts the money in the pockets of the consumers and allows them to go out and spend the money, and that stimulates the economy. We have implemented the neoconservative agenda, and it has not benefited 99 percent of the American people, whether it is foreign policy, the war in Iran, the disengagement in the Middle East, what is going on all over the world or on the domestic side, with Katrina and the prescription drug bill and the stagnant wages and the increase in energy costs, all of these things. We have now witnessed what it looks like when the neoconservative agenda is implemented, and just look around. If you want to know what happens, just look around. You see it. What we are trying to say is an increase in the minimum wage, cutting student loans in half, implementing the 9/11 recommendations, shoring up our border security, these are things that we are going to do; and we have a long history in our party of doing it, and we will continue to do it when we take over. But it is important to recognize that the statistics are there regarding the minimum wage. We could sit here and make moral arguments all night long because it is, it is the morally right thing to do; but at the same time it is good for the economy and it is good for people all over the country, and I think the more we recognize that, the better off we are going to be. I want to make one more point. When you talk about this 7 million people who make minimum wage and the underclass and the people all over our country who are living in poverty, and the minimum wage would keep you in poverty if you work 40 hours a week and you are a working mom, we only have 300 million people in this country. We are competing with billions of people around the world, 1.3 billion in China, 1 billion people in India. We only have 300 million. So we have got to go to great lengths to make sure that all 300 million that are physically and mentally and emotionally capable so they can be on the field playing for us. This is what an increase in the minimum wage does. That is what cutting interest rates on student loans in half, that is what that does. That is when you look at the Democratic Party's Innovation Agenda, creating incentives for venture capital and research and all of these things that we are doing, broadband access for all Americans in the next 5 years, when you look at what we want to do with alternative energy sources, my God, we cannot just reject science outright. Let us turn it up. You know, let us get America focused on an alternative energy plan, and we can do that and that is doable; but we need the leadership here in Congress and the resources. Instead of going to the top 1 percent to give them a tax cut, we should be focusing on what is the next generation of alternative energy going to be. Let us implement the recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Let us secure our ports. We can do all these things; and at the same time as we are doing this, we have to talk about what Mr. Tanner came down here a couple of weeks ago to talk about with us, Dennis Cardoza from California, his piece of legislation, that says we are going to audit, we are going to audit the Federal Government, and we are going to make sure that there is no fat, no waste, no abuse, no misspent funds, no misappropriated funds, no misallocated funds, and frankly, like in Iraq, there are funds missing, $9 billion. Nobody knows where it is.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Since there has been oil.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. See, last night, you tried to one-up me with the chart, and now tonight you are copying my charts.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I will get you one.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Then when we come down here, we will just take the chart from our office and carry it down here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What this really illustrates is our plan, as we have it here before I get into the homeland security, our plan is, as we begin to rein in the spending from the Republican Congress, cut out the corporate welfare, with the Medicare part D, all the major subsidies that are going to all the big pharmaceuticals and health care industries, what we want to do is we begin to move towards balancing the budget, reducing this payment here in the red, and then we have money to invest in lowering college tuition costs, making sure health care is affordable for all of our citizens, making sure we raise the minimum wage. All of these things are going to fit into our long-term economic plan that the Democratic Party has. We just need to control the levers of government here to make sure that happens. This is exactly how we are going to go about it. One of the other things that we will invest in, my good friend, and I think it is important to make this point, just in the first few days when we get in, think about it, raise the minimum wage and reduce the loans, the interest on the college loans, by half. So for the parent loans and the student loans, in the first day or two that we are here, we will cut the interest rates on those loans in half. You will save thousands of dollars over the life of your loan, about $5,000 for the average loan. We will raise the minimum wage, and that is for a single mom who works for minimum wage, who lives in poverty right now. That is unacceptable in the United States of America. Another thing that we will invest in that this administration and the Republican-led Congress have failed to address is the issue of border security. These are facts that we are going to show you here. When you compare, because I think again the rhetoric on the other side is right where it needs to be, but the reality is something drastically different. If you look at here, Clinton, and these are all comparing President Clinton and what he was doing under his term, two terms, and what happened under President Bush and trying to compare, the average number of new Border Patrol agents added, per year, under the Clinton administration, the average was 642 Border Patrol agents per year. Under the Bush administration, 411 per year. It is one thing to say you are for protecting this country from illegal immigration, and it is another thing to do it. Under President Clinton, we were able do it under his leadership. Fines for immigration enforcement, through the INS, in 1999, under President Clinton, 417; 2004, three. Three. Completed immigration fraud cases, 1995, under President Clinton, 6,455; in 2003, 1,389, 78 percent fewer. Democrats understand how to administer government and what needs to be done. Under the leadership of President Clinton, we were able to achieve success. I wish we could keep going in the right direction. But, unfortunately, under the Republican Congress, under the Republican House and Senate, under President Bush, this Congress has consistently taken the country in the wrong direction, and I think it is frustrating for a lot of people because I think the rhetoric is there. The numbers for 2004 have come in, and a lot of our friends on the other side want to tell us how great the economy is doing. I invite all to come back to my district where we have thousands of Delphi workers and thousands of General Motors workers and steelworkers and people who are not doing so well, and an increase in the minimum wage would affect them. But the numbers have come in from 2004; and in 2004, the top 1 percent, their real income grew by 17 percent for the top 1 percent. Same people that get the corporate welfare, same people that get the tax cut, real income grew by 17 percent. The bottom 99 grew by 1\1/2\ percent. Is there economic growth? Yeah. The problem is it is not affecting everybody. The problem is it is just 1 or 2 percent of the people. Even upper-income people, upper-middle-class people did not benefit from real wage growth like they should have.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, and the best part about this chart is again, really, college tuition up, gas prices up, health care up, this is since President Bush has been in; median household income, down 4 percent. When you have all of these increases, rapidly increasing, and the wages are increased by 4 percent, a terrible problem. But here is the real problem, President Bush says, America's economy is strong and benefiting all Americans. Come to Youngstown, Ohio, Mr. President. Come to western Pennsylvania. Come to south Florida, come to the Midwest. The economy is not benefiting all Americans, and the President needs to realize that. You know, I don't want to get into the whole international relations discussion here, because this is our focus, and I don't want to. But I am going to make one comment, because I know you want me to. This administration has been totally disengaged from average American people, from the international community. This problem we have in the Middle East right now is because this President disengaged the peace process 5 years ago. He has not been engaged. The number of terrorists are up from what they were in 2000, okay? Up. We have got problems now in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Iraq. We have got insurgency in Iraq, and we are spending $8 billion a month that needs to be going to address these problems, not building roads and bridges, health care centers and hospitals, and schools in Iraq, but building them here in the United States of America and lowering tuition costs.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Why do you have to always try to one-up me?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Republican House, Republican President, Republican Senate. Bottom line.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. My old friends in the House.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you just look at what we would do once we get in, just in the first day or two, pass an increase in the minimum wage; reduce college tuition costs, interest on student loans by half for both parents and student loans, cut in half to save people about $5,000. Just those two things alone will save average American families thousands of dollars. Implement 9/11. Now, Mr. Gingrich brought up a great point. They are in charge of a government, Madam Speaker, that just cannot function. They do not know how to run government. They have had the opportunity over the past 5 years, and they have been incapable and unable to execute and administer government. They run it down for years and then they expect it to work. They hire their buddies who know how to run ponies and administer horse shows, but then they cannot execute FEMA, Katrina, Iraq, Medicare, health care, gas prices, college education. They do not know how to administer government. Everyone likes to say that the Democrats do not know how to administer an immigration policy. Well here's the statistics. From 1993 to 2000, the average number of border patrol agents added per year under Clinton, 642; under Bush, 411. Who is trying to protect the country from illegal immigrants coming into the country? It looks like to me that the Clinton administration did a heck of a lot better job than the Bush administration and the Republican Congress did. INS fines for immigration enforcement, 1999, under President Clinton, 417 fines for immigration; only three in 2004 under President Bush. Seventy-eight percent fewer completed immigration fraud cases under President Bush. Under Clinton in 1995, fraud cases completed, 6,455; in 2003, under President Bush, 1,389. It is not about ideology. It is not about what your rhetoric is. It is not about our little cute phrases that you may have and you may have worked on in some little interest group or some little building somewhere in D.C. and you just say the right things and it may sound like you know what you are doing. These are facts. Gas prices are facts. College tuition numbers, they are facts. Health care costs, those are facts. Prescription drug costs, those are facts. Tax rates on small businesspeople, those are facts. It is kind of funny because you go back home, you go back to the real world, and you get out from where the Potomac fever is, and you go back home and people are not saying things are going real good for them. But you come down here and our friends, many of them are our good friends, on the other side that stand in the well and they will try to convince everybody how great the economy is going. But when you go back to Ohio or Miami, it is not same. We know how to do this and we want, Madam Speaker, an opportunity to take back over the House of Representatives that was created by Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution. We want an opportunity to govern, to lower tuition costs, increase the minimum wage, implement the 9/11 Commission report, provide for the common good, the common defense, and do it with some commonsense and get the country going in a new direction. On www.housedemocrats.gov/30Something, all of our charts will be available. This was the 30 Something 2-minute drill today.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that, because exactly what you are saying fits into the overall economic picture. And there was a great column the other day in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, who kind of outlined, as the statistics finally came in from 2004, we now know how the economic pie was divided in 2004. So what happened in 2004, which I find very interesting, this is inflation-adjusted income. The top 1 percent in 2004 had a real income increase of 17 percent. And the other 99 percent had an increase of 3 percent. Basically what we are saying here, is over the past 5 or 6 years, where President Bush is in and the Republican Congress, Senate and House have all been in, the top 1 percent had an income growth of 17 percent on average. They received tax cuts from this administration. They are the same executives that represent the oil companies that get $400 million retirement packages. They are the same representatives on the boards of all the major multinational companies that have been going gangbusters. When you move the jobs offshore, and you take them to China, and the profits go up, and they just go to a small group, that is the same group that is getting the tax cut. That is the same group that is getting the corporate welfare, on and on and on. All we are trying to say is raise the minimum wage for the least among us, the 7 million people who need a little bump. For many people, this is irrelevant. I was having lunch today with a guy from Girard, Ohio, who owns a bunch of nursing homes. His people are at $8 or $9 an hour. He says, this has no benefit for me, one way or another. Why not raise it? Why not lift those 7 million people up, because you want to make an incentive for them to work and not create an incentive where they want to go on the government dole. But if you look at what's happening here, while the top 1 percent had an income growth of 17 percent, while they got corporate welfare in the energy industry to the tune of $17 billion, this is what has been happening here at home. Minimum wage has gone up 0 percent since 1997; whole milk, 24 percent. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you are going to the grocery store, and this is having an effect on you. Bread, up 25 percent; 4-year public college, 77 percent up; health insurance, up 97 percent; and regular gas, up 136 percent. We have leaders in the Republican Party saying I don't believe in the minimum wage, I am never going to vote for the minimum wage. I am never going to vote for an increase in the minimum wage. I mean, come on, what are you thinking? We need average Americans to be lifted up. I know, down in Florida, in Ohio, time and time again, we have people who need assistance. I want to make a point that the system right now is cutting against average people. If you got a couple kids in college, and tuition has doubled in the last 5 years, and you have to take your kids to and from school, and gas is up 136 percent, and you own a small business and you are trying to cover your employees, and health insurance is up 97 percent, you are just an American trying to make ends meet, keep your family together, and hopefully give the next generation an opportunity to have a little bit better off than you had it. People down here aren't doing anything to be helpful.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We don't have the money to give, so we have to go out and get it somewhere. We borrow this money from China, OPEC countries, Japan, to give to a millionaire so that he can get a Hummer. No American, I can guarantee you, believes that that is a good idea. That can't be a good idea. Because now we owe China money, and we have given the wealthiest people in our society a Hummer, and our kids are left to foot the bill.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I wouldn't be too complimentary. This President hasn't vetoed one spending bill, and he comes to the Rose Garden and says the Republican Congress needs to control their spending. He has not vetoed one spending bill.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, it is not just the eight or nine that I listed, as you were probably walking down here, the eight or nine times that Democrats have offered to increase border security and border patrol and actually fund it and not just make the promise to do it. Think about the Medicare prescription drug bill. One of the first things we will do when there is a change of power in January is make sure that with the Medicare prescription drug bill we will allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down the drug prices to save the taxpayers' money. Now, that is good policy from any party that is running the government, but our friends on the other side have refused to implement that basic thing. So we have tried for border security, we have tried to reduce the cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill, giving the Secretary of HHS the ability to negotiate down the drug prices, and we will increase the minimum wage on the first day we are here when we take over in January. That means a pay raise for all Americans because that will trickle up and push everybody's wages up. That was proven. When we raised the minimum wage in 1997, the economy grew 11 million new jobs. And in the States that had a higher minimum wage than the national minimum wage, there was increased numbers of small businesses that were created, new start-ups, and retail small businesses were increased. This is good for the economy. In the first week we will be here in January, we will reduce student loan interest rates and we will cut them in half, both for parent loans and for student loans. We will have a significant impact in the lives of many, many Americans just in the first couple of days from what we are going to pass out of the House: Increase in minimum wage, lower student loan rates for you and your family, increased border security, and allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to begin to negotiate on behalf of all the Medicare recipients. This is not brain surgery. We are not saying we have this grand elaborate scheme that we cooked up somewhere and we are bringing it before the American people. This is basic fundamental stuff. But when you are not so attached to the special interests, when you don't have a K Street Project in which there is this give and take with the big lobbying firms down here, you are able to govern in a way that benefits all of the American people. And that is what we are trying to get at. Let us take the country in a new direction, where we have a philosophy where everybody contributes to America and everybody benefits. We are actually looking out for the common good. We will provide for the common defense and we will increase the common wealth. You know, I go to some of these States like Virginia and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and they are all commonwealths. That philosophy, what do we have in common, how can we pool the common wealth to benefit everyone? Everyone contributes and everyone benefits. And what we have now, Mr. Delahunt and Mr. Meek, is a situation that has set up a system that has been corroded and corrupted. Now, I am not saying by individual Members. I think over time this happens. Jefferson said that every few years we need to have a revolution. Well, we need a bloodless rebellion to shift power out of the hands of the Republican controlled House, Republican controlled Senate, and the Republican White House. This is George Bush's Congress, Mr. Delahunt. Let us make no mistake about it. They do what he says. They follow his lead. They are afraid to stand up to him. He hasn't vetoed one spending bill or one bill that this Congress has passed out. They rubber stamp the Bush philosophy and they consistently agree with the President. This is his Congress. I yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The same thing with the deficit. With the fourth largest annual deficit in the history of the United States of America, the President makes his way out, Madam Speaker, and touts it like it is some great success, like we should all be pounding our chests and proud of this. The fourth largest deficit in the history of the country. And we are borrowing the money from Japan and China and OPEC countries and all these other countries that give them real leverage on us when we try to act in a diplomatic way, whether it is with North Korea or Russia or China or whatever it may be. What would the Democrats do and what have the Democrats attempted to do time and time again? The Democrats have tried to reestablish the PAYGO rule, and we have tried to do it numerous times in the past several years. Now, what is PAYGO? PAYGO basically says that we will not spend any money in Congress unless we can pay for it. We are not going to go out and borrow the money. We have got to pay for it. Here it is, and there have been numerous--this is just a couple: The Spratt substitute for the budget resolution in 2006 failed, not one Republican voted for it, rollcall vote number 87. We are not making this up. We tried to put PAYGO rules into the budget process and the Republican Congress voted against it, because that would limit their ability to provide corporate welfare to the oil industry, to subsidize tremendously the health care industry. Again, Congressman Spratt, vote rollcall number 91, failed again for the budget resolution in 2005, 194 to 232. How many Republican votes? Zero. And I know Dennis Moore has tried to do it, Charlie Stenholm, when he was in Congress, he tried to do it. Time and time and time again, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Democrats have tried to implement basic structural changes so that we could balance the budget. It is not a coincidence that when President Clinton was in and the Democrats passed the budget in 1993 and we began to implement some of these rules, we had a tremendous explosion of economic expansion that lifted everyone up; and then, in 1997, passed an increase in the Federal minimum wage which, actually--there is a statistic here that I just love from American Progress, 4 years after the last increase in the minimum wage, the economy enjoyed its strongest growth in over 3 decades, adding 11 million new jobs. And, the small business employment between 1997 and 2003 grew more in States that had a higher minimum wage than the Federal minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage is good for the economy. It is a different philosophy, it is different, but it works.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. There was a gentleman at work who worked for President Bush, Douglas Eakin. Holtz-Eakin, former director of CBO for President Bush said, ``The long-term outlook is such a deep well of sorrow that I can't get much happiness out of this year.'' This guy used to work for President Bush.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate your yielding as we begin to wrap up. Maybe Mr. Meek could get that chart down there and give us the Web site as we begin to close. I think you can be an amateur historian to recognize what has happened here; that in 1994 there was a move afoot to change things. Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and there was a crew of them who came to this floor, like we come to this floor, and like we will continue to come to this floor, to talk about issues. They were talking about balancing the budget and they were talking about instilling fiscal discipline. Mr. Meek showed earlier the quote from Mr. Gingrich, and I read last week in the Boston Globe a comment from Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader, who said ``I'm not sure what this Congress has accomplished.'' These are two of the main leaders of that revolution. The Republicans have gotten very far away from what they wanted to accomplish and, I think, what this country deserves. And when that happens, Madam Speaker, it becomes time for a change in America. I think that is where we are. Again, if you just look at what the Democratic Congress will do within the first couple of days that we get in, that this Republican Congress has failed to do in the past 5 or 6 years under complete Republican dominance, we will raise the minimum wage, we will cut student loans in half for both student loans and parent loans, we will implement the 9/11 recommendations to make sure we provide for the common defense of the United States of America, and we will allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices for the Medicare bill to not only save the taxpayers money but drive down drug costs for everyone. We are going to invest in the small business, as our small businesses are trying to retool themselves. We need assistance for them with the Manufacturing Extension Program and with the SBA 7(a) loan program. We want to give local community development organizations the tools they need to help their small businesses, and some of these programs help businesses. They send out a couple of engineers to help them retool, to make sure that they are streamlining their businesses, to make sure they can find export markets. This is a positive thing, because many small businesses can't afford to do it. So we've got an agenda. Put us in, coach, we are looking for an opportunity to play. We have an agenda, and I think the American people will recognize in just a few short days what the difference is between the current Republican leadership and what the Democrats will do. Our Web site is www.House Democrats.gov/30something, and all of these charts and statistics are available on that, Madam Speaker.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And just to clarify, if you don't mind, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, as you stated, we do not have the money to give to these millionaires to go out and buy a Hummer. So where do we get it? I don't know even if we have a chart here. Mr. Meek has a chart. I will yield to the gentleman in a minute.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the opportunity again for the 30-something Working Group to be down here to talk about issues that are pressing not only to the country but to those people who are in their 20 somethings or 30 somethings and how some of the policies here in Washington, D.C., are playing out in their day-to-day lives. The previous speakers talked a lot about making sure that we secure our border, and the Democratic Party has been very supportive of trying to fund Border Patrol and take different measures that we are going to make sure that we did actually secure the border. I think all Americans can agree that if we do not secure the border, any policy that we try to deal with afterwards will not be effective until we actually do secure the border. I would like to go through a list here of different amendments that Democrats have tried and tried and tried to get passed since 2001 that the Republican majority has voted against. Now, this is not a partisan issue. You would think it is an issue all Americans should be concerned about, but sometimes when you get one-party control of the House and the Senate and the White House, you get obstruction and this is what happened. These are all dated and these can all be found on our Web site. In 2001, vote 454, November 28, Republicans voted against consideration of an amendment that would have added $223 million for border security. In 2003, another one, Republicans voted against consideration of an amendment that would have added $300 million for border security. 2003, vote 305, Republicans once again voted against consideration of an amendment that would have added $300 million to enhance border security, adding border agents and inspectors along our border. June 16, 2004, vote 243, Republicans voted against consideration of an amendment that would have added $250 million, Mr. Speaker, in order to meet the promises that the Republican majority made regarding the PATRIOT Act. Again in 2005, vote 160, Republicans again voted against a motion to send a report back to conference with instructions to add $284 million. And for fiscal year 2006 and 2007, Republicans have repeatedly broken the promises they made on border security in the intelligence reform bill, the 9/11 Act of 2004, which included 2,000 additional border patrol agents, 800 additional immigration agents and 8,000 additional detention beds per year from fiscal year 2006 to 2010. Democrats have consistently tried to increase border security, and the Republican majority has consistently voted against it. I am not done. Again, 2005, vote 174, Republicans voted against consideration of an amendment that would have added $400 million for border security to meet the promises that Congress made for the 9/11 Act, again increased immigration agents, increased border patrol agents. 2005, vote 187, Republicans voted against a Democratic substitute to the homeland security authorization bill that was designed to fulfill the promises again in the 9/11 Act, and it goes on and on, again vote 188, in 2005; vote 56 in 2006; vote 210 in 2006 in May, where the Republicans finally voted against consideration of an amendment that would have added $2.1 billion for border security. We have tried and tried and tried to put the proper legislation and the proper funding in place, Mr. Speaker, to secure our border, and that needs to be the message. Before we get on to any other discussion regarding immigration in the United States of America, if we do not secure that border then nothing will matter, and that is exactly what we have been trying to do. I think, Mr. Speaker, when you look around the world, and it hit me as I was reading the Sunday Times from this past Sunday, why it is so important for the United States to maintain a strong position in the world, promoting peace and democracy and liberty and freedom and capitalism, all of the basic tenets of our society, all the basic structures of our society. If America does not do it, it will not happen, and it will not happen. All you have to do, if you do not believe me, we like the third party validators here, look what is happening in Russia. We hear a lot about what is happening in China, crackdown, dissent, human rights abuses. We hear a lot about what is going on, currency manipulation, suppression of religious freedom, but look what is going on in, quite frankly, state-run enterprises that are putting American businesses into bankruptcy. We also see what is happening in Russia. Russia offered to help North Korea protect their nuclear weapons with technology, and then this is a special report in the paper, the Kremlin tightens reins on free market, where President Putin is having a Cabinet meeting and those major members of the Cabinet are also running major enterprises in the state. It is imperative for the United States of America to maintain this position of strength, and it is nice to see that I have been joined here by my friends from Florida and from Boston and our other friends who made it here, too, to have this discussion about why it is so important for America to maintain this position. The Democrats have consistently tried to take this country into a new direction, into another direction and get ourselves out of this wageless recovery and this endless occupation that we are in. I would be happy to yield to my good friend from Massachusetts.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Wow. When is your birthday?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Something more important than us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And even in the first couple of days, we will raise the minimum wage and cut college loan interest rates in half for parents and students. Just in the first couple of days, once we get this signed into law, we will recognize a huge difference. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts that we have here can be accessed on the Web site. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. It has been a real pleasure.