Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are not done yet.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Be happy to yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. He is not a king, Mr. Meek.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Okay. That is what we have borrowed from them. Iran, Iraq, Libya, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bahrain, Ecuador, Oman, Venezuela, Qatar, Nigeria, Kuwait, Indonesia.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I said Iran and I also said Iraq. I also said UAE, which has been in the news lately. But I just wanted to clarify for you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Iran, all the nuclear issues, all the conflict and controversy, we are borrowing money from them to finance the Republican spending spree that is rewarding their wealthy contributors.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Them, along with a lot of other countries, yes.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would like to thank Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It is good to have you back. Mr. Meek, congratulations again for being elected to chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. You are such a young member. Congratulations for getting that reward from your peers. Www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30Something. All of the charts that the Members saw tonight can be accessed off this website. The third party validators. This is not Kendrick Meek and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Ryan making this stuff up. These are facts. And hopefully these facts will lead to us recognizing that we are not doing everything we can and hopefully we can get the country going back in the right direction.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Find a positive way to explain that. Our friends on the other side who say we are always being negative. Figure out, if they can explain to us a positive way of saying that this country is being sold off to other countries piece by piece. If they can find a positive way of explaining that, we are open to it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This was last year.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Delahunt, if you do not mind, I want to share another chart. This is the public debt held by China. One country, in 2000, they held $62 billion. In 2005, they hold $257 billion in public debt. This is when the President took office. Now look at it. With the rubber stamp, Congress has just, time after time after time, continued to exacerbate this problem. Now, look, in June of 2002, the Republicans increased the debt limit by $450 billion. That means they are okaying the Treasury to go out and borrow more money. In May of 2003, they increased it again by another $984 billion. In November of 2004, they did another $800 billion. Now we have got a pending increase that we know is going to happen because this runaway train isn't getting stopped any time soon, another $781 billion. That is $3 trillion in debt that the Republican House and Senate and Republican White House went out and borrowed from foreign countries. Now, who is patriotic now? You want to call this patriotism, mortgaging the future of the country to the Japanese and Chinese Governments and--

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. OPEC.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you. We are no longer controlling our own destiny.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, you are our guy. But back to the reason we are here, the issue of ``trust us.'' And all we have to do, really is look at the facts. And I really believe that the Republican majority, they may believe that they are actually doing the right thing. I do not think there is any malice. I do not think they hate people. I do not think they are bad people. Many of them on the other side are our friends. What I do argue, Mr. Speaker, is that the Republican Party is void of any knowledge about how to execute government. And I believe they do not have the ideals necessary to advance this government and this country in the 21st century. They just do not have them. They are just stuck, I think, in an era that no longer exists. Their old phrases no longer apply to how society is today. And so all they have, quite frankly, Mr. Meek, is to say, ``Trust us.'' But when we look at Katrina and the fact that there are 11,000 trailers sitting in Hope, Arkansas, worth $300 million that are now in the mud because they did not know how to deliver them or they did not know where they went, or they did not know where they should go, meanwhile people are still homeless down there. That means you do not know how to administer government. When you start a $700 billion prescription drug program and you do not allow for any kind of negotiation down of the drug prices, that means you do not know how to execute government. When you lose $9 billion in Iraq and you get a Three Stooges routine that, you got it, I mean you got it, I mean Curly got it, no one knows where $9 billion is, it is just example after example after example that this outfit does not know how to execute government. And when you have spent, as the Republican majority has, the last 10 or 15 or quite frankly, since President Reagan, running down government, it does not work. Government is the problem. And then you actually need it, and the outfit who hates government doesn't know how to execute it in a way that is meaningful.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And for our friends in the business community, it is like having a board of directors or having shareholders. If the people running the business are not doing the job, Mr. Meek, then the board of directors may have to make a decision. Well, the United States Congress, Mr. Meek, is the board of directors.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. How many times do we hear from our friends on the Republican side that government needs to run like a business, it needs to be flexible and this and that? This is an atrocity. This business would be bankrupt if you ran it the way we are running FEMA. If that was a business, it would be bankrupt. The war in Iraq, in that execution, the administration of that war, after we conquered Baghdad, that business would be bankrupt. It would go belly up.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I just want to say to the gentleman, one, how much I agree with you. And two is we are not saying that government is the only answer in many situations. It is not. In many situations it needs to get out of the way. Maybe it does need to be a bit smaller. But it has responsibilities, and certain responsibilities are not being met under this administration because of an utter and total disrespect for government in general, and this outfit comes with the same old ideas that are not applicable today, and this is the kind of execution of government that you get. You get 11,000 trailers in Hope, Arkansas, with nowhere to put them.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We have missed you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And a lot of what they were trying to say, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, was how were we to know. We found out they did know. They were warned. And then not only were they warned, but they were spread out all over the country saying our responsibility is to execute this particular agency at this particular time and we should all be here. That is a level of incompetence that I think is unsurpassed.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The execution of government includes a lot of different things, including how administrative agencies are run and Medicare and the prescription drug program are run. But the one issue that highlights the incompetence of the Republican majority and the Republican President is what we have been doing as far as our national debt and our annual deficits. Now, this chart, and this is really one of the great charts, it is good, shows increases in the Federal debt in foreign borrowing. So way out here in the blue is the increase in the national debt from 2001 to 2005. Over $1 trillion, $1.18 trillion was the increase in the national debt just in the past 4 years. Of that debt, of that increase, $1.16 trillion was borrowed from foreign sources, Mr. Delahunt. Right here. You want to know how much we borrowed from U.S. interests, from domestic borrowing? Right here. $0.02 trillion. I mean, we are mortgaging our future to foreign interests, the Japanese Government, the Chinese Government.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is a great point. We will get criticism levied at us from the majority, saying how dare the 30-Somethings go out there night after night, sometimes 2 hours a night, and all they are is critical. Wait a minute. Are you asking us to just sit by and let all this happen, and no one is providing a little sunlight on this? I hate to tell them, but Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution creates this body, Mr. Meek, this body, and the problem I think with the majority in the House and in the Senate, the Republican majority in the House and in the Senate, is they are too coachable. They are too coachable, because the President coaches them, and he basically says ``We need X, Y and Z,'' and it goes out and happens. They are too coachable.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. But what do we have?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is our responsibility, to say if the executive branch is not executing their responsibilities the way they should, then we have to intervene and make some big-time decisions.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, that has really been the problem here. And I thank the gentleman, and I want to congratulate you, as your partner down here at the 30-somethings, for your recent election to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation as their chairman; and I want to congratulate you, only in your second term to receive that distinguished honor. But I agree with you 100 percent.