Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Tonight is a great night. Tonight is like super 30- something night. This is like great stuff. I mean, I am excited. I may need to sit a couple plays out tonight, because not only do we have the chief Blue Dog, we are hoping that at some point during the course of the night that he will deputize us as maybe Blue Pups tonight. I want to be a Blue Pup tonight.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Please.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The point I would like to make, and this is why I am such a big fan of Mr. Tanner, I think this helps us convince the American people and shift our party into a direction that says we don't want to go and tax people. We know that they struggle with health care and gas prices, college tuition, all of the costs we review here every night, increased by 40 and 50 percent. What Democrats in 2006 are saying, following the lead of the Blue Dogs, is that there is waste in the government. We need to audit and find out where that money is so we can take that money and invest that money in education and invest that in health care and invest that into all of the programs that we believe in, our priorities. This is for me, personally, 32, 33 years old and a new Democrat in many ways, this is a beautiful thing because this is the vehicle, your piece of legislation, that I think changes our party in 2006 and gets us ready for the next century to say that we don't want to tax anybody any more than we need to run the government, but we can never go back to the taxpayer until we first say we are spending your money responsibly.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And what is the end result of all of this wasteful spending? I think it is important to point out what the long-term effects are. When President Bush took office, our debt limit was $5.9 trillion. As you can see, and these charts are on HouseDemocrats.gov/30something, in June of 2002, it increased by half a trillion dollars. May of 2003, another debt limit increase. November of 2004, another one. March 2006, another one. The budget this year for 2007, the budget resolution will raise our debt limit to $9.62 trillion. By 2011, the debt limit under the Republicans will almost double from when President Bush took office. Now we are trying to say that we want to audit the government and save money and make sure that we invest it properly into our priorities that will lead to economic development, and it is clear that the Republican majority, which controls the House, Senate and White House, has been fiscally irresponsible not only with the way they lack enforcement, they don't audit and pay attention to where the money goes, and then they turn around and borrow it from China and Japan and OPEC and all of these other countries and run us into this huge structural debt that hurts the economy long term.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Do you know what this comes down to? This is just boiling all this down, regardless of the issues that you are talking about: What do we believe in as a country? What do we want our country to be? The great thing about being an American is we get to decide. We do not have 30 or 40 people in the upper echelons of government telling us what we want the country to be like. We get to vote on it, and the American people get to express themselves at the ballot box and decide what we want this country to be like. Now, what we have had here over the past 5 years with a Republican House, Republican Senate, and Republican White House is tremendous deficits, borrowing more money from foreign interests in the last 4 or 5 years than we have borrowed in the last 224 years. Do you believe in a government that should put everything on a credit card? Do you believe in a government that should give tax breaks to millionaires and then never raise the minimum wage? Do you believe in a government that should have a $1 trillion prescription drug benefit and not do anything to contain the cost because the pharmaceutical industry may not like it? If you believe in that kind of government, then you want to continue with what we are doing right now. But if you believe in a government that is for the common good and the common defense and uses common sense, then you want to vote for the Democrats. If you want to raise the minimum wage by a couple bucks an hour, then you want to vote for the Democrats. If you want to reduce the cost of prescription drugs by using the bargaining power of the United States Government and the Medicare recipients, then you want to vote for the Democrats. If you want to take some of this money that we are going to squeeze out of the government because we are auditing and finding the waste and abuse in our government and invest that money in the Pell Grants, then you want to vote for the Democrats. I mean, this is very simple. They have their beliefs; we have our beliefs. And we need the American people to affirm those beliefs at the ballot box. And I believe in November, Ms. Tubbs Jones and Mr. Meek, that the American people are going to affirm the beliefs of the Democratic Party because we are ready, willing, and able. We have the will and the desire to go out and lead. Put us in coach. We are ready to rock and roll.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate you letting me do this. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thought we were going to move on.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You brought up the Republican lack of plan or planning or any agenda really. But I think we are living, as we said the last time we were here, we are living in the midst of an implemented neoconservative Republican agenda. Here it is. We are living in it right now. You want to know what the Republicans will do? Go to the gas pump. Look at your health care bills. Look at your college tuition. Just look. Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan. This is the neoconservative agenda as ordered. This is exactly what they wanted to do. They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the White House, and here it is. Look no more.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Knowing a lot of members on the other side of the aisle, I am not sure that they don't care, but clearly it is weak, passive leadership. We need strong leadership. We need not only a new direction, but strong, bold ideas that are going to take us forward. This whole idea, the whole political realm is about ideas. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are dinosaurs. They are still working in the old oil days and those countries that are going to be on the cutting edge are going to be into these alternative energy sources. But you can't have weak, passive leadership that fails to step up to bat when the country needs them. One gentleman who was in my office said we need leadership. We need you to help us. We are losing control. We feel less and less like we are in control. And the things that the Democrats want to implement are to make sure that people have control of their own lives to the extent that they can, and that is education, that is being healthy, that is making sure that there is opportunity through these investments and research and development that we want to do. We want to make sure that these ideas are getting out there through strong, bold leadership that is going to move the country forward. I know Mr. Meek supports that. I have had conversations with him about that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And that is not what he was saying last night about Dallas when we were watching the game.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just read today in a paper from American Progress, Scott Lilly, former staff member here, who wrote on the minimum wage, and I think he said in there that the minimum wage has the lowest value since the Eisenhower administration.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So it is unbelievable to think exactly where we are and the lack of leadership that we have here. On that one poster you just had up, President Bush said the economy is benefiting all Americans. I find that interesting. I had some steelworkers in my office just today from all over Ohio, and they certainly don't think that the current economy is benefiting all Americans, that is for sure.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And in the context of this, where do we get the money to give the millionaire to get the Hummer, we don't have it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are borrowing this money. That is the kicker. As Mr. Meek pointed out earlier in the hour, where we are getting the money from to borrow to give to the people who make more than a million a year, and now we have to pay interest on that money. This is what we pay in interest on the debt, just the red, $230-some billion compared to what we spend on education, homeland security and veterans. So a disproportionate amount of our budget dollars go just to pay interest on the debt. We get no value from that. We are just giving the Chinese, the Japanese, the OPEC countries, our money that they will continue to try to invest and take jobs away from us. We do need to go in another direction. I think this goes right to the heart. There are two belief systems here. There is the Republican belief system that says cut taxes for millionaires, give corporate welfare to the oil and health care industries, okay. That is their belief system. Let's make sure that the pharmaceutical industry has no ability or we don't have any ability to negotiate down the prices with them. That is their belief system. But the Democratic belief system is that everybody needs to pay their fair share and make some sacrifice. Why is it just the middle class, the poor and the small business owner making all the sacrifice while the wealthiest people get their tax break. Our belief system is that they need to pay their fair share, those making more than a million a year because they are benefiting from the largess of the United States of America, and we need to take that money and invest it into research and development, stem cell research, 21st century technologies, broadband for every household, making sure that our schools are functioning, No Child Left Behind is funded, and that we reduce the amount of interest that you have to pay on a college loan. Mr. Speaker, what the Republicans are doing with college loans is ridiculous. Now the Democrats want to cut student loan interest rates in half for both parents and students. The Republicans want to increase it and give tax breaks to millionaires. The Democrats are for raising the minimum wage. The Republicans will not bring a bill to the floor that actually passed out of committee that raises minimum wage. The Republicans are for giving corporate welfare to the oil industry. The Republican Congress put that money in, $16 billion went to energy companies, corporate welfare at this time of great profits. All of these things, it is about beliefs and we have our share of beliefs, they have theirs, and the American people are going to choose.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, do the Celtics still have a team?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here to open up for another discussion with the 30-something Working Group. We will be joined later by our friends from Florida who have been rooting on the Miami Heat in the last few days and are very excited about some key victories. So Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz will be here soon. The issue tonight, Mr. Speaker, for all of us as Americans, I believe, is one of the most pressing issues our country has faced in a long time, and that is the issue of our national debt and our annual deficits that we are running here in the United States of America. We have always prided ourselves in the United States of being able to balance our budgets and pay our bills, and making sure that we were like the average family in the United States that had to deal with paying bills, making sure at the end of the month we at least broke even, maybe even had a little bit to save. Throughout the course of the 1990s, under the leadership of President Clinton, and in 1993 with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, we passed a budget resolution, as Democrats, that balanced the budget and led to one of the greatest economic expansions in the history of the world, which lifted up millions of people, created 20 million new jobs, and led to prosperity for everybody in the country. We put in place PAYGO rules, which said that you can't spend any money that you don't either raise taxes to spend it or you cut spending somewhere, but what you don't do is you don't go out and borrow it. You don't go to China or Japan or OPEC and borrow the money. You make sure we have the money that we generated ourselves, and we pay our bills and meet our obligations: Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, education, Pell Grants, health care, children's health care, or whatever the priorities may be, we would have the money to pay for it. So the discussion tonight, Mr. Speaker, is of an issue that is pressing not only to the 30-something generation, because we are going to be around to pay the bills for the reckless spending, and our kids and our grandkids, the next couple of generations coming, but you can't get something for nothing. And right now the Republican House and Senate and President Bush are basically living on a credit card at the expense of the next generation of Americans who are going to be forced to pay the bill. Mr. Speaker, I know you have seen this chart before, but it is indicative of the situation we are in in the United States of America. In 224 years, from 1776 to the year 2000, all of the Presidents and all of the Congresses borrowed a total of $1.01 trillion from foreign sources, foreign interests, in 224 years. The current President and the current Republican House and the current Republican Senate have managed, from 2001 to 2005, to borrow more money from foreign interests than all the previous Presidents in the previous 224 years. This is staggering. And you may ask, Mr. Speaker, well, what are the 30-somethings talking about this for? We are supposed to talk about issues, Mr. Speaker, that affect kids and 20-somethings and 30-somethings, and young families. This is the most pressing issue for the next generation of Americans because we are going to be the ones left footing the bill. When tax rates go up for the 30-somethings or the 20-somethings, or the kids that are in college or in grade school now, because of this reckless borrowing, it is irresponsible. It is not in the public interest. It is not in the interest of the next generation, Mr. Speaker. And, therefore, it is an issue for the 30-something Democratic Working Group to talk about. So it may be $1 trillion. Where are we getting it from, Mr. Speaker? Look at this picture of America, and it shows exactly where we are getting it: $682 billion from Japan; $249 billion from China, the U.K., the Caribbean, Taiwan, Germany, Korea, Canada; and $67.8 billion we have borrowed from OPEC countries. OPEC countries. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the cost of gas and with the price of a barrel of oil, that the United States has been so reckless and so irresponsible that we would go out and put ourselves in the position where we have to borrow money from OPEC and borrow money from China? This has a lot of different effects. This is just like when you get a loan for your house. You look at your house, and your house costs $110,000, and then when you take out a loan, you look at what you are going to end up paying to actually get your $110,000 house, and it is thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars more. This is what we are doing here. We may borrow $682 billion from Japan, we may borrow $250 billion from China, but how much more do we have to pay on interest, Mr. Speaker? That money is not going to be going to other priorities here in the United States of America. So China, who has been wiping out the middle class of the United States of America, especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Indiana and Connecticut, and a lot of the other areas of the country, China is loaning us money. We pay them the interest on it, they take the interest, make some money off the Americans, and invest that back into their state-owned companies that will compete directly with American manufacturers here in the United States of America. Now, I know we are in a global economy, and nobody wants to say that we are not going to trade. We all know that is ridiculous. We all know it is going to happen. But to borrow money from a country that is going to take the interest that you pay them on it and invest it back in to compete against you makes it even more unfair than the situation already is. You are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. It is irresponsible, and it is reckless because we have to pay the interest, but you are also aiding and abetting your competition every day. Again, here is what we borrowed. The increase in the national debt, $1.18 trillion; and of that, $1.16 was borrowed from foreign interests, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and only $.02 trillion borrowed from domestic interests. And let me make one more point before the Miami Heat takes the floor again. This is the kicker, Mr. Speaker. All of that money that we borrow and that we have to pay interest on, here is what it looks like in the 2007 budget authority. This is billions of dollars. The big red bar on the left is what we have to pay in interest, interest on the money that we are borrowing. So this money that the American people send down here and we spend it on education and health care and this and that, the biggest portion goes to just paying interest on the debt; and China and these other countries will take that money and reinvest it back into their state- owned, Communist-run facilities. But look how it compares to what we are spending on education or on homeland security or on veterans. This is really the icing on the cake. This is what makes it so irresponsible. Not only are we putting the burden on our kids, but there are current investments that we cannot make because we are forced to spend all this money on just the interest on the debt. I yield to the Miami Heat.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The issue here, and I love that chart because it does put everything into perspective, is that this outfit is leaving America worse off than they found it, and that is really upsetting. When you think about long term what we are going to have to deal with, what the 30-somethings and people with kids in college and grade school, what kind of country are you leaving these kids, that is what frustrates me. We have an obligation to make sure that we leave the garden patch a little nicer than we found it. And the debt, the war, you are strapping this next generation for generations. We are going to spend our entire life in public life or our generation's service to the country is going to be fixing the war in Iraq, balancing the budget, and trying to make ourselves competitive in a brutal global economy. It is frustrating, but it is the overarching theme that the Republican Senate and House and White House are leaving the country worse off than they found it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And where do we get the money to give the money to the millionaire to go buy a Hummer? We have to go borrow it. That makes no sense.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And it is not like we have the money to give the person making a million dollars.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I was a Larry Bird fan from way back.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We don't mind you making a profit. Profit is not a dirty word. Go out and make money, hire Americans, this is good news. But do it in the national interest.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think he made $390-some million. So they are paying this guy a $398 million retirement package, $2 million tax break, and companies like this are only investing $10 million, when they can give them a retirement package of $400 million. Newt Gingrich said, just to wrap up, our good friend, Mr. Speaker, about the Republican Congress, ``They are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.'' This is your laundry list that you just mentioned. Mr. Speaker, all of these posters are available on our web site for other Members to access at www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. All these posters are available. We missed our good friend Mr. Meek, and we cheer on the Miami Heat.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, when you look at what happened in the late 1990s with what the Republican committees were willing to investigate going on in the executive branch, what they were willing to investigate under President Clinton, they spent $40 million chasing him around, and now you are not even willing to provide some oversight for the war or Katrina or any of these other things? It is not a witch hunt. These guys are saying we are screwing up, let us fix it. I yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Please.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Special Order.