Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So let us look at this. We talked about two things basically tonight. We talked about the ports and the debt ceiling. On the port deal, to try to increase spending, the Democrats offered, I don't know, a dozen different amendments to try to increase funding from U.S. ports, and each time the Republican majority shot our idea down. We had ideas. We offered solutions. The Republican majority, Mr. Speaker, shot us down. Ms. Wasserman Schultz just talked about the pay- as-you-go system, where if you pay more for a program, you have to find money somewhere. You have to raise revenue or cut spending, but you have to pay for it so we don't have to borrow from all these foreign countries. Former Member Mr. Stenholm offered an amendment to try to implement PAYGO rules into the budget process. Mr. Thompson from California tried to do it, Mr. Moore from Kansas tried to do it, and Mr. Spratt tried to do it on numerous occasions, to implement pay-as-you-go rules to try to constrain the reckless spending from our Republican colleagues, Mr. Speaker. And in each instance, Mr. Meek, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, it was the Republican majority who said we will not accept fiscal discipline, we will not accept increased funding for our ports; and the Democrats were the party offering the ideas and offering the amendments time and time and time and time again to prevent this from happening, where we owe Japan $682 billion, we owe China $250 billion, and we owe OPEC countries, Mr. Meek, $67.8 billion. Now, that is a shame. And I don't like that. And I don't think the American people like that. I yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. March 6 sent a letter to John Spratt who is our ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. Today, it was reported in the Associated Press the Secretary told Congress yesterday in this letter, the administration is taking, quote, all prudent and legal actions, end quote, including tapping certain government retirement funds. Now they are tapping retirement funds to keep from reaching the $8.2 trillion national debt limit, and in the letter to Congress he said that we need to raise the debt ceiling immediately to avoid the first government default on its obligations in U.S. history. If this outfit hasn't gotten us into a real predicament, I don't know what a predicament is. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we are going to default on our obligations. The United States of America, Mr. Speaker, for the first time in our history. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is important for us to say, Mr. Speaker, to the Members of this chamber that this is brinksmanship now with the debt ceiling. We are on the line here, and Secretary Snow, and I do not know if you went over this before.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Again, I just want to make this point because we are not demagoguing this issue. What we are saying is 95 percent of the cargo coming into the country is not inspected. All we are saying is it should not be 5 percent. Should it be 90 or 80 or 70 or 50 or 40? It should be certainly something more than 5 percent, and all we are saying is we are giving corporate subsidies to the oil industry, giving corporate subsidies to the energy companies, giving corporate subsidies, totally, billions and billions and billions, to the health industry. You are giving tax cuts to Bill Gates, and this is going on. So Democrats, Mr. Speaker, want to say let us increase this gradually as we are able to balance the budget and hopefully make investments in this. You are going to hire American people, hire American worker, protect the country, send a signal across the world that do not even try it, okay. That is the bottom line.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, www. House Democrats.gov/30something. That is www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. Members of Congress can go to this Web site and access all of the charts, see our third-party validators, and see why we are so alarmed at what is going on here in our Nation's capital. I yield to my good friend, Mr. Meek.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. When you think about the $16 billion in corporate welfare that we have given to the energy companies; when you think about the billions and billions and billions of dollars in subsidies we have given to the health insurance industry through the prescription drug program that has been a total debacle, you will see that what the Democrats are saying is that we have a better plan. We will not give $16 billion to the oil industry, the most profitable industry in the world, Mr. Speaker. We want to spend that money prudently, in a fashion that best represents the interests of the American people. And that is what we have been trying to do as Mr. Meek went through, Mr. Speaker. Amendment after amendment after amendment, the Democrats and the minority tried to attach to the majority Republican Party's bills. And we tried to get September 29, and you can get all of this, and we should put all of this on our Web site so everyone can see Democrats have tried and tried and tried to get increased funding for homeland security and for the protection of our ports, whether it was Mr. Obey from Wisconsin, Mr. Sabo, Senator Byrd, Mr. Obey, Mr. Sabo again and again and again. All throughout. This sheet goes from 2001, 2003, 2003, 2003, 2003, 2004, 2004. Time and time again the Democratic Party has tried to get amendments on spending bills that would increase funding for port security by $100 million, by $500 million, by more if we could try to plug this gap.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is right. Again this is a third-party validator. This is from the Federal Register. Coast Guard estimate to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act, how much money do we need to protect ourselves? $7 billion. What has the Republican Congress appropriated? $900 million, .9 billion. So we have got a long way to go here as you can see. So as Mr. Meek is going to start reading this stuff, Mr. Speaker, this is billions. Democrats were trying to put amendments on that were like $150 million. We are not even trying to increase it all that much. But we are saying we tried a billion. We tried $500 million.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As we have been saying for a long time in the 30- something group, we have got to try to convince, Madam Speaker, the Republican majority to start putting the country before their own political party, and I think we would be okay. The Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something, Madam Speaker, for all the Members who want to access this. All the charts that you saw here tonight, Madam Speaker, are accessible on this Web site for Members to access. To my friend from Florida, I thank you for the opportunity to be here with you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think, at the end of the day, this is symbolic of what is happening in all these other areas that we talked about tonight. It puts a face, so to speak, on what is happening, that Mr. Meek talked about, all the foreign borrowing, the deficits and everything else. Now, it is like, well, it is our ports, my goodness gracious. Well, that is just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And in addition to the money that we could be investing, and those are all investments, those are paying our Head Start, a million per Congressional district that is going to get spent on health and education and pushing it into our future making sure that we keep our promise to our veterans who we have promised that we would provide health care for. But at the same time, when you balance the budget, you keep interest rates low. And we notice now how interest rates are starting to creep up every few months another quarter point, quarter point, half. It keeps going up. We want to balance the budget here like President Clinton and the Democratic Congress did in 1993 without one Republican vote, Madam Speaker, without one Republican vote, balanced the budget. Interest rates stayed low, and people went out and borrowed and invested in the economy. So it is not government's job to go out and create work. We have a responsibility, and one of the things is to keep the budget balanced, keep interest rates low, and then allow that money to be borrowed by the private sector, so people can go out and make a profit and hire people and put that money back into the economy. Be happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, let us do this here. This is the debt increases that you were referring to in the letter. Already, this President, and this Republican Congress have raised the debt ceiling, which means this country can now go out and borrow more money from the countries that Mr. Meek was talking about. June 2002, this Republican Congress okayed raising this debt ceiling by $450 billion. In May of 2003, $984 billion increase in the debt ceiling. November of 2004, $800 billion, raising the level of the debt ceiling again. And then the pending increase, $781 billion increase in our debt ceiling. That is a total of $3 trillion, $3 trillion that this Republican Congress has okayed, Madam Speaker, and will go out and borrow from the countries that Mr. Meek just spoke of. Now, real quick, of that increase, since 2001, this country has borrowed $1.18 trillion, which is signified by the blue bar there on the far left. Of that money, of the $1.18 trillion, $1.16 trillion, the orange bar is foreign debt borrowed from foreign countries. And over here, this bar, you could barely see, Mr. Meek, that is domestic borrowing. So of all these, of this debt of the money we are borrowing, it is almost 100 percent from foreign countries. Piece by piece by piece. It is not just the ports. It is not just the ports, Mr. Meek, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It is our future. It is this country that is getting mortgaged, and we have to pay interest on that. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I yield to you to talk about that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to let the Members know according to the Department of Treasury, again, third-party validator, the OPEC designation includes those countries, what is it, $65 billion?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Meek, will you yield for one moment?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Unbelievable.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Meek. It's trillion.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Cabbage and sauerkraut.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Getting ready for New Year's.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I am friends with him. But the point that he made, Mr. Meek, talking about their saying, trust us; and Republicans say that the American people should trust them. But we have a history here that says we have trusted you and you have misled us. You misled us with the facts of the war, you misled us on the economy, you misled us on the results of what the tax cuts would be, you misled us when you said government was going to be smaller under your reign, you misled us when you said government would be more responsible under your reign. It has failed time and time again. I have two images in my head, Mr. Meek, about the real incompetence of the Republican majority to be able to run government. I have a picture of 11,000 trailers that are sitting in Hope, Arkansas, in the mud right now that cost the taxpayers $300 million that are sitting in the mud, and we still have people that are not in their homes in the gulf coast. That is a government that does not work. And what the Democrats are saying is that we have solutions to this. We are not going to participate in cronyism and the lack of responsibility and responsiveness on the Republican side for not providing any oversight to all this. Then we have the administration come out and say they didn't know anything about it, but memos leak out, and we find out they knew about it. Now, all of a sudden we get videos that are out saying that the administration knew exactly what the threat was and what would happen yet still not being able to respond. That is the bottom line. The people of this country, Mr. Meek, want a responsive government. It doesn't have to be big, and in today's society, government should not be big, but it should be responsive, effective, efficient, nimble, flexible, able to change with different scenarios as the scenarios change and as society changes. Our Republican friends, and I mean that sincerely because I consider many of them friends, they just lack the ideas to try to move the country forward. So it is not anything personal, it is just that they do not have the ideas, Madam Speaker, to move this ahead. What the Democrats offer, and this is the thing, Mr. Meek, for us personally, definitely in the 30-somethings, and I know our Democratic friends believe, profit is not a dirty word. Profit is good. Greed is bad; profit is good. We want more profit, because that means more people are going to get hired. But in the end, our friends on the other side, on the Republican side, cannot put forth an adequate reform agenda that will move the country forward. All we have to do, Mr. Meek, is look at what the budget looks like right now. Look at what the budget looks like right now.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to be friends with you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, I thought it was very interesting when our friend talked about trust. I couldn't help but see earlier our friends, the Truth Squad, and they were talking about all the spending increases and spending increases, all borrowed money. All of it is borrowed. And it is not having results. We are talking about results. We are talking about having an impact. And as my friend, Mr. Davis, said, who I just enjoy being around him. I mean he is good.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Wrong.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, our friend Mr. Davis is on the Budget Committee, and I think when he talks about you are preparing a substitute right now, what the Democrats are going to do when we are in charge, Madam Speaker, we have a track record already, and Mr. Meek has the statistics, and we have the charts here. Mike Thompson from California offered a vote on pay-as-you-go to make sure everything we spend money on was budget neutral, so we did not go into deficit. Charlie Stenholm, when he was in office, offered it. Republicans voted against that, and voted against Mike Thompson's bill. Dennis Moore of Kansas offered a pay-as-you-go amendment to a piece of legislation that got shot down. Every Democrat voted for it. Every Republican voted against it. Mr. Spratt offered amendments within our budget that we were providing to try to amend the budget resolution, on two occasions, in March of 2005 and again in March of 2004. Zero Republicans voted for this. So when Mr. Davis says this is what the Democrats are going to do when we are in charge, that is what we are talking about here, making sure you pay for your bills as you go along, not this reckless spending.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is a big typo.