Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Let me share a statistic that is Americans' ranking with broadband penetration as of January of 2005. Korea has almost a 25 percent penetration; China, 20 percent; Iceland, 15 percent; the U.S., 11 percent. This is one area where we are falling behind in a big way. Another area that you touched upon, this is the number of engineers, people with engineering degrees this year: China, 600,000; India, 350,000; U.S., 70,000. We cannot compete in a brutal, brutal global economy if we are not making the kinds of investments that are going to increase this number. Now, I understand that the Chinese and India, they have more people than we do, all the more reason that we need every single citizen in our country on the field with the opportunity to play and to help make investments in the United States and create wealth in the United States. That is what this Innovation Agenda does, broadband penetration, next 5 years in every household as Mr. Meek said, increasing the number of engineers and scientists by 100,000 in the next 4 years. That is in the Democratic Innovation Agenda, and let me just share with who assisted the Leader Pelosi and the Democratic Caucus with putting this together. John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, Incorporated, said that, ``The Innovation Agenda focuses on the right issues for building our Nation's competitiveness, from investing in basic R&D, expanding science and math education and broadband infrastructure, to creating a globally competitive business environment . . . I look forward to working with both sides . . . to implement these laudable goals.'' That is not Tim Ryan; that is not Kendrick Meek; that is not Nancy Pelosi. That is the CEO of Cisco saying get our act together and make the proper investments that need to be made. Also, the Federal Government affairs person at Microsoft says that ``we ask Congress to give these issues serious consideration and support.'' And he says, ``At Microsoft, we are committed to changing the world through innovative technology and, in order to fulfill that commitment, we need a pool of well-educated, skilled workers.'' This is not just one party. These are CEOs, probably even Republicans; and if you go to our Web site, we have all of the quotes from a lot of people, from the American Corn Growers Association, TechNet.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. In 5 years.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the opportunity once again to come to the floor of the House of Representatives as the 30- Something Working Group. Myself along with Kendrick Meek, Mr. Meek from Florida, and also Ms. Wasserman Schultz from Florida, we have been coming here now, Mr. Speaker, for a couple of years talking about the condition of the United States, our fiscal situation, Mr. Speaker, our investment situation or lack of investment in the United States of America, and also what we believe is the Democratic Caucus and Leader Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and the issues that we are trying to put forward. It has been a very interesting week here for the Democratic Caucus, Mr. Speaker. We had a wonderful guest, George Lucas, the famous writer, director, producer of the great Star Wars movies; and he was here to talk about the innovation agenda that the Democratic party is beginning to put forward. And we have, Mr. Speaker, an innovation agenda to keep America competitive in the 21st century. As we look at what has been happening here in the United States, this kind of breaks down into two or three separate categories. One, if we want to be a strong country, we have got to start here at home; and we got to start making the investments here in the United States. Research and development, education, health care, alternative energy technologies must start here; and we must begin to grow our economy here, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to be of any good to anyone else here in the world. Unfortunately, our friends across the aisle on the Republican side have failed miserably in their attempt to try to balance the budget here in the United States of America. We have, as citizens of this country, regardless of what political party you belong to, we have as a country an $8.2 trillion national debt, $8.2 trillion dollars. Each citizen in this country owes $27,000 to our national debt. If a baby is born today, that baby owes $27,000 to the United States government to help us pay our debt. If you are a senior citizen, you owe $27,000 to the United States Government. And if we keep going down the path that we have been on, and here it is, $8.2 trillion as of Valentine's Day, 2006, and your share of the national debt is $27,500. Mr. Speaker, we have a real situation in the United States of America. So not only do we owe this, not only does each person owe that, what do we do? So if we are running a $400 billion annual deficit or $300 billion, what do we do to fund business in the United States of America? We have got to go out and borrow the money. And this President in the first 4 years of his term borrowed more money from foreign interests than every single administration prior to his in the last 224 years. This President borrowed $1.05 trillion from foreign interests in 4 years, more than every other president before him. Is that making America stronger, Mr. Speaker? I do not think it is. I think it weakens our country. And here it is. This President in a Republican House and a Republican Senate has borrowed $1.05 trillion from 2001 to 2005. And all of these Presidents did not borrow as much from foreign interests as this one has. And that puts us, Mr. Speaker, that puts us at a position of weakness because guess who we are borrowing the money from to pay the bills. We borrow some from U.S. interests, but this is a chart that outlines who else we are borrowing this money from. $682 billion we have borrowed from Japan; $249 billion we have borrowed from China; $67.8 billion from OPEC. Are you kidding me? We are borrowing money from OPEC to help fund and plug the hole in our annual deficits here? Meanwhile, they are making money hand over fist. This is a very dangerous situation that we are in, Mr. Speaker, because here is the end result. Here is where the rubber meets the road. As we all take out loans to pay for our homes or our cars or our kids' education, unfortunately you cannot just borrow the money at zero percent interest. You have got to pay interest on the money you borrow. So the interest on $8.2 trillion is a lot of money. So what does that mean for our annual payments that we have to make just on the interest? This chart is the 2007 budget in billions of dollars. This big red bar that gets up to $230 billion is what we are going to pay in the 2007 budget projected on interest on the debt, just the interest. We are not paying it down. We are just paying the interest on it, and this nice lavender bar that barely gets up over $50 billion is what we are going to spend on education and then homeland security and then veterans. The irresponsible policies of this administration put our fiscal house in disorder because we are spending so much money on just paying the interest on the money we owe the Chinese and the Japanese and the OPEC countries. That is a great deal for those countries, great deal for them, but what about us? A stronger America starts here at home. So until we fix this problem, there is no issue we can go on addressing because it straps our hands behind our back, Mr. Speaker, because we want to make investments in education, research and development, Pell grants to lower the cost of college tuition, put research money into figuring out an alternative energy source so we are not dependent on some of these OPEC countries. But check this out: this is the interest on the debt that I just showed. This is what we could spend every day in this country if we did not have to pay all this interest on the debt. We could invest $1 million a day into every congressional district. I represent a district in northeast Ohio, Youngstown, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; Niles, Ohio; Warren, Ohio; Portage County. Kent State University is in my district. This is an older area in the northeast of the great State of Ohio, the great Buckeye State. $365 million I could have to go back to this area and invest in the schools, Head Start, all kinds of other different things just from my district; and every other Member in here, Mr. Speaker, would get $365 million, a tremendous difference. Give it to the Chinese banks, the Chinese Government; give it to the Japanese banks, the Japanese Government; give it to OPEC or give it to the kids who are trying to go to school in Youngstown, Ohio, of which 80 percent live in poverty that go to Youngstown city schools. I know what I would like to choose. Some other things here. We could provide health care to 79,925 more veterans if we would not have to pay the interest on the debt like in the late 1990s when we made the very difficult decision here, and I am glad the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) is joining us for this point. A very difficult decision in 1993 when President Clinton got into office. We were running budget deficit after budget deficit every year, and our Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, with a Democratic President, balanced the budget in 1993 without one Republican vote. I am not saying some Republicans would not vote for it now, but at that time, when the heat was on, without one Republican vote, and it led to balanced budgets, surpluses as far as the eye could see, investments into education, Hope scholarship, the whole nine yards and the greatest economic expansion in the history of this country. More important, the private sector, because interest rates were low, the private sector was able to go out and create over 20 million new jobs. We cannot create jobs here in government. That is not our duty. That is not our responsibility. This is the chart, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Bush, all in the red; and Clinton in the late 1990s, after the 1993 budget was implemented, we started having surpluses in the late 1990s, projected out as far as the eye could see because of fiscal discipline. That is what our job is here, balance the budget, keep interest rates low, invest in the education and research, like this country has always done, and the private sector will join and take over. Some other things. If we did not have to pay the interest on the debt, we could enroll 60,000 kids into Head Start. You want to talk about being compassionate, you want to talk about if you practice the Christian faith, being a Christian, I think somewhere that means making sure we can invest into those poor districts, those poor children, and I am so glad that Mr. Meek is joining us because we started out here, and that ``we'' being me, talking about the impact of the budget deficit and the fiscal situation that we are in right now and the damage that it is causing to the American economy and the lack of investment because we are paying the interest on the debt to many of these countries overseas. So thank you very much for joining us. I know you were busy in a Homeland Security Committee hearing, and I appreciate you coming up to support the 30-somethings.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And you may like this one because this totally reaffirms what you just said. It affirms it, but then it even reaffirms it. At the House Budget Committee hearing this morning, the committee hearing was on discretionary spending.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I do not think you can.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We cannot afford business as usual.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Wonderful.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. There is a corruption tax that is being levied on the American people because you pay for the end result. The American people pay, Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day. When a Medicare negotiator, the head of the Medicare program, is negotiating the Medicare prescription drug program that costs $700 billion and at the same time is negotiating his lobbying job that he is going to go to when he is done working for the Federal Government and the Medicare prescription drug plan is a mess. When the oil industry gets $12 billion in corporate welfare and they have the highest profits they have ever had, setting records, and who pays at the end of the day? The American consumer. And we cannot get enough money to people who are trying to get heating oil and lower gas costs. So from the budget to the execution of Katrina and the war, failing to balance the budget, borrowing money from China and Japan, giving away corporate welfare to the oil industry and the health care industry at the cost to the American taxpayers, two of the most profitable industries in the world, and at the same time when members of this administration are not only negotiating that bill but are negotiating personal contracts for themselves, there is something wrong here and we need to fix it. And the Democrats have a plan because if it were not for their behavior, we would be able to implement our Innovation Agenda that would go on and create millions of jobs in this country. We would incentivize research and development with our R&D tax credit that we have in here. We would be able to double the funding for the National Science Foundation for more research and development that the private sector could come in and benefit from. We could do all these things, but we need to ask the American people politely but forcefully we want a chance to govern this country because we have the ideas and commitment to make this happen. Mr. Speaker, other Members of this House can get a hold of our information and our charts that we have used today at www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. Mr. Meek, do you have any closing remarks?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that. Mr. Speaker, as we wind down here, just to sum this all up, I think we have addressed an issue tonight. We found a theme, Mr. Meek, about incompetence. And it is not personal. Democrats at one point many, many years ago maybe did not do right by the American people, who knows. But I am saying this is not personal. But there is a real trend going on here with Katrina, with the war, and this administration and the Republican House and the Republican Senate's inability to execute the responsibilities of government. We are running huge annual budget deficits to the tune of $400 billion next year. They are going to raise the debt limit for the fifth or sixth time in the Bush administration to over $8.2 trillion. The fiscal house is a mess. We are borrowing money from China, Japan, and OPEC countries. Inability and an incompetence when it comes to governing in the United States of America. And then we talk about corruption, and there is personal corruption and then there is stuff that affects the people, Mr. Meek, and what is happening here is with the Medicare prescription drug plan, for example.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I do not know what it is.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Just this morning, today, Thursday. One of the things OMB and the White House are emphasizing this year is this great new agency rating system that they have put together with ratings from effective to ineffective. Okay? And they looked at FEMA and the administration's self-performance, so this is the fox watching the hen house here. Mitigation programs were rated moderately effective. Disaster recovery, adequate. Disaster response, adequate.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I know that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You know what? If this was a sexual escapade there would be hearings all over the place. But this is about $9 billion in taxpayers' dollars that is gone, and no hearings. No one is getting there. In fact, here comes the report. I don't even know what I just did with it. Here comes the report, the article about the $9 billion. Paul Bremer says and the Pentagon disputes the Inspector General's report. Not, we better find out what happened because we do not want it to happen again and we are the guardians of the public tax dollars. We have got to make sure what happened never happens again. That is not what we get from this outfit. We get: It was not us. It wasn't me. I don't know. What did you say? I cannot hear you. And these guys say, Inspector General, watchdog groups, $9 billion unaccounted for. The Pentagon says, We disagree. Well, then, where is it? Show it to us. We are not wiretapping you. How do I know? How do I know? Because you told them? You are the same group that told me that the war was only going to cost the American taxpayer $50 billion and now we are up to $400 billion, and you said we would be greeted as liberators, and that never happened. And you said we would use the oil for reconstruction. That never happened, Mr. Speaker. Why should we believe anything that is coming out of this administration or the Republican Congress right now? It cannot be trusted.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of the people in the whole, entire country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I accept the time, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to, first of all, thank Mr. Miller for his leadership. I am able to sit on the committee with him, on the Education Committee, and we go through these struggles all the time. But before we get to our friend, Mr. Inslee from out west, who is very familiar with technology because of the mass amounts in his district, I want to put forth before I do that the 30-Something Group is pretty consistent. We do not want this to be about Bill Delahunt or Rush Holt or Kendrick Meek or George Miller saying something. We want to have a third-party validator, and so before we kick it over to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), I just want to say what some high-tech CEOs are talking about when they refer to our innovation agenda, the Democratic Innovation Agenda. John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, Incorporated: ``The innovation agenda focuses on the right issues for building on our Nation's competitiveness, from investing in basic R&D, expanding science and math education and broadband infrastructure, to creating a globally competitive business environment . . . I look forward to working with both sides of the aisle to implement these laudable goals.'' That is the CEO of Cisco Systems. How about the Federal Government affairs managing director of Microsoft: ``The policy agenda announced today by Democratic Leader Pelosi and her colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus to promote investment in education, research and development and innovation marks a positive step forward in the struggle to maintain our Nation's competitive edge in the global marketplace . . . At Microsoft, we are committed to changing the world through innovative technology and, in order to fulfill that commitment, we need a pool of well-educated, skilled workers. We ask Congress to give these issues serious consideration and support.'' This is the CEO of Cisco Systems. This is the Federal Government affairs director at Microsoft. This is not Tim Ryan from Ohio who is toeing the line for the Democratic Party. This is the CEOs, many of them Republicans, saying this is the kind of investment we need to make. Go to our Web site and you can see the whole packetful of quotes that will be up there from CEOs from around the world.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They are begging for the leadership that we should be providing in this Chamber.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), my good friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield for just 10 seconds. This is at the same time that this President and this Republican House and the Republican Senate have the political gumption to give $16 billion in corporate subsidies to the energy companies and billions upon billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the health care industry and the pharmaceutical companies, at the same time they are cutting these programs. I just want the American people, Mr. Speaker, to be aware of what is happening here. They are not just cutting this stuff because we are in tight fiscal times. They are cutting it, and at the same time giving corporate welfare to the tune of billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to the wealthiest industries in the country, to the most profitable industries in the country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I only took 15 or 20 seconds. You took a minute and a half.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree 100 percent with you, my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. We ask the Members to send us something if they have any comments about what we have been talking about.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to show you the graph that we have here. I would like to welcome all the gray hairs to the 30-Something group. And you, obviously, Mr. Delahunt, the gentleman from Massachusetts, has been here for a while, so your gray hair is--

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You brought up the issue of global standards, and this is a chart that illustrates what you were talking about. This is the students who will graduate with engineering degrees this year. In China, 600,000; India, 350,000; and the U.S., 70,000; and a good portion of the U.S. graduates will be foreign born who will probably return to one of these countries but fits under the U.S. statistics. How are we going to possibly try to jump start our economy if we are not going to address this issue? Under our innovation proposal we are saying we want to create 100,000 new engineers and scientists in the next 4 years. We are limited to what we can do because this President and the Republican House and the Republican Senate have run up such tremendous budget deficit that we have to pay down. When we get in charge we will have to pay down the debt for a while and reduce the deficit, but we are focused and we have a way to pay for this 100,000 new engineers and scientists in the next 4 years.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to make a distinction here. This President finds the time and the energy and the commitment to put $16 billion in corporate welfare into the energy bill, finds the time and the energy and the commitment to put billions upon billions of dollars in the Medicare prescription drug bill that is going to some of the most profitable industries in the country, including the pharmaceutical industry. So the fact of the matter is we have got a President who is committed as he could possibly be to corporate welfare for the most profitable industries in the country, but yet we just want to train math and science teachers. We just want to create 100,000 new engineers and scientists, Mr. President. That is all we want to do, Mr. Speaker.