Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, then, this number, my friend, the purple lavender, it is a nice lavender, it needs to be at the level of the red. The education needs to be up here, and the net interest on the debt needs to be down here. Then we will start talking about innovation.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Which is also going back to OPEC. So OPEC is benefiting from the high oil prices, high gasoline prices. They are benefiting from the net interest we have to pay on the money we are borrowing from them at the expense of education, homeland security, and veterans. Let me just show you this, and let me just say this is a powerful, powerful, powerful group of information here that we need to share, and I have got to tell you something. I love this slide. I love this. I want to be friends with this slide. Look what we can do. This says what else could the government do with the interest, the red that we just showed, what else could the government do with the interest that the country pays every day on the debt that we have. $1 million in every congressional district per day. That means in the gentleman from Florida's congressional district, you get $365 million; the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), $365 million for your congressional district; $365 million for mine. I can tell you, with the health care priorities and education and veterans that live in my district, they would love to have an extra million a year. With the debt every day, we could provide health care for almost 80,000 more veterans if we balance our budget, if we get our fiscal house in order here. We could improve Social Security solvency by almost half a billion dollars if we could begin to balance the budget.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Can you repeat that? I missed that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A track record here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And OPEC. And OPEC. Did I mention OPEC? But this is an issue that, Kendrick, we need to oversee what is going on here and the Republican leadership does not want to provide the proper oversight. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars which goes to the interest on the debt, which we have to borrow from the Chinese and Japanese, which allows them to fund their economy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is the problem. Article I, section 1 of the Constitution creates the House of Representatives, and our job is to oversee everything, including the administration. So if they are at war, we should be overseeing this. And if there is a bunch of political hacks that are making money off this, then we need to go and bust them. We need to be involved. But this Republican Congress will not oversee what is going on in Iraq, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Delahunt was just talking about, you are paying for, you are, I am, with interest, because we are borrowing it from the Chinese and the Japanese governments.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to make a point, and then kick it to my friend, that all of that money that is wasted, Kendrick, is going to this. Okay? There was $100 million here, $100 million there. No oversight. No oversight at all on behalf of this Republican Congress.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Basic stuff, basic stuff.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, can I interject, because I can, this may be going to build schools; but it is going to build schools in China, because they are making money off of us. It is going to build schools in Japan, which of course we want the kids all over the world to be educated and healthy. We were all for that. But you know, not because of the recklessness that the Republican majority has been exercising here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Do you have the number on the trailers, how much that cost? Because I heard it today, and I am sorry to interrupt you, but I think this is a salient point that we need to make.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Www.housedemocrats. gov/30something. All of the posters that we had up tonight you will be able to access on the Web site. Again, I think that is an important point. Democrats have consistently tried to put fiscal restraints on this runaway spending that the Republicans have been doing over the past few years here, trying to balance the budget here so we can get back on the right track and get back the surpluses. We have got our hands full. Housedemocrats. gov/30something. Happy Valentine's Day to all the sweethearts out there.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely. And when you talk about investment and the result of the ripple effect of investment in education, the shortsightedness in making these cuts that Republicans have made, increasing student loans, or a 50 percent increase in interest rates in college loans, where rates will increase from 4.1 percent to 6.8 percent in dealing with the college loans, if you look at what countries like Ireland have done as part of a reform package which included some tax cuts, which we are for, but we have to do them in a targeted responsible way. But one of the things they did in Ireland was they made college education free. Everybody goes. There are no barriers. I think, why is it so complicated to figure out what the student loan process is like? Why can't we just have a form for student loans and it says how much you make, how much you get, and sign on the dotted line? This should be readily available. Because we know now that investing in a kid's education is the best investment we could possibly make in the return that we get. Because with a high school diploma you make $20,000 a year, $25,000 a year. With a college diploma, you make $40,000. With a master's degree you make $60,000. You are paying back more in taxes. So let us make the initial investment and make sure these students get through college, make sure there are no barriers, and long term we will get money back. I have used this statistic before: the University of Akron did a study a few years back that said in Ohio for every dollar the State of Ohio invested in higher education, they got $2 back in tax money, for the very reason that people with college degrees make more money and, therefore, pay more in taxes back to the State. So it is a great investment to make. Right now, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, we are really being very shortsighted in what we are doing. Here is a chart that you can find on our Web page. The number, by the thousands of students that will graduate with engineering degrees this year. In an economy where we want to create jobs, you need engineers in order to create the kind of wealth that we need. In China, they will graduate 600,000 engineers. In India, they are going to graduate 350,000 engineers. In the United States, 70,000 engineers. Now, I recognize that there are some population differences here, but the United States needs to compete with these folks in these other countries. And if we don't focus on making sure we reduce the barriers to college education so that everyone gets involved, create incentives for our students to get involved in engineering and chemistry and computer programming and the new high-tech jobs that are going to drive the economy and create wealth and lead to addressing some of the issues that Mr. Bartlett was talking about with alternative energy sources, we are not going to be able to compete. You can't have a tier-one military if you don't have a tier-one economy. So these investments that we want to make in education lead to economic growth, which expands the economy, which means we are going to be able to keep our military a tier-one military and a leader in the world. And it puts us in a position of strength, because as we grow the economy, we can stop borrowing money from the Chinese Government in order to fund our deficits; and then we will be in a stronger fiscal position here at home and then better able to deal with the problems that we have abroad. We need to begin to do the kinds of things we are talking about, investing in education and at the same time not just throwing money at the problem but making sure that parents and teachers and principals and superintendents and local communities are held accountable. This isn't going to be we are just going to throw money at the problem like our Republican friends are doing. They want to curry favor with the senior citizens, they throw money at a $700 billion prescription drug program and they do not do anything to contain the costs. They do not allow reimportation from Canada to drop the price down, and they do not allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down the drug prices. You can't just throw money at the problem like our Republican friends want to do without having any accountability. So the Democrats are looking for opportunities and have ideas to make sure we fund these programs. We do it in a responsible way, knowing that in the end the long-term growth is going to lead to budget surpluses like it did in the 1990s.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and let me first say to the gentleman regarding his presentation here tonight regarding alternative energy sources, not only was it impressive and thorough, but I think he hit the nail right on the head. I think this is an issue that the next generation is going to have to deal with, and I know that our 30-something Working Group is very interested in working with the gentleman for alternative energy sources and figuring out what we are going to do. Our topic tonight, Mr. Speaker, is what is going on here at home regarding the budget and regarding the budget deficit that the Republican Congress has run on an annual basis, but also the national debt. The President will be coming back to the Congress to ask the Republican Congress to raise the debt ceiling, the debt limit. This is deja vu all over again. This Republican Congress continues to borrow and borrow and borrow and spend and spend and spend, really, like drunken sailors, like there is no end in sight; and our country cannot continue to go down this irresponsible path. We would like to talk a little bit about it tonight. In order to borrow money, the Congress needs to pass legislation and the President needs to sign legislation that will allow the U.S. Treasury to borrow money; and the more deficits we run on an annual basis, the more we have to borrow. So the debt ceiling gets lifted. The Republicans went out, borrowed more and more money till they hit that ceiling and had to pass legislation to raise that ceiling again to allow the Treasury to borrow even more money. That is what is happening right now. To give you some perspective here, Mr. Speaker, when President Clinton came into office in January of 1993, we were running tremendous budget deficits. In 1993, a Democratic Congress and President Clinton passed a budget without one Republican vote and passed the budget that led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America, created over 20 million new jobs. The stock market went crazy. There were benefits for everyone in our society because of the tough decisions; and quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, several Members in the Democratic Caucus lost their seats over that tough vote. They made very difficult decisions in the early stages of President Clinton's Presidency in order to balance the budget and do the right thing; but even though they made this difficult decision, we were still running tremendous budget deficits early in the 1990s, mid-1990s. So President Clinton came to this Congress in his 8 years, and as we can see here as President Clinton came in, running budget deficits and then eventually running surplus into the later years of his Presidency, but President Clinton early on, because of the deficits that were run up through the Reagan administration, through the first George Bush administration, and then into the Clinton administration, President Clinton had to come to Congress and ask to raise the debt ceiling. Just to give you some perspective, Mr. Speaker, in 8 years, President Clinton asked the Congress to raise the debt ceiling twice, two times, in order to fix this problem. Then we had economic growth, we had balanced budgets, we had surplus money, and we had arguments in this Chamber about where the money was going to be spent. Two times in 8 years President Clinton early on asked to raise the debt ceiling. President Bush, current President Bush, has asked this Congress to raise the debt ceiling five times already, five times, because there is runaway spending from this Congress. I am joined by my friend, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz). Five times, because of the runaway spending, the corporate welfare, time and time and time again to the pharmaceutical industry, to the HMOs, to the energy companies the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) was talking about earlier. We continue to give this corporate welfare, and with a blatant and reckless disregard for the fiscal responsibilities that we have here. We all know now that we are borrowing the money from the Chinese Government and Japanese Government, the Saudi Arabian family, the house of Saud. So we are not going to the Second National or Sky Bank or Bank of America to get the money. This Congress and this President are going to the Chinese Government to get it. I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you look at what the Democrats are offering, they say the Democrats do not have any ideas. That may sound good, but we are the party of ideas. We are beginning to communicate them, I think, in a way that is effective. If you look at Ms. Pelosi's innovation agenda that we came up with in our caucus by meeting with high-tech companies and asking them what they want, if you look at our competitiveness agenda that we have, investments in research and development, R&D funding has stayed flat under the President's watch, and it is way below what it was 20 years ago. If we are going to be competitive, we have to make some investments in research and development. We are blowing money by giving subsidies to the energy companies when we should invest it in basic research. I was in Israel in November. They are doing some fantastic things with venture capital and business incubators and research and development, and the Israeli companies have just surpassed Canada on the NASDAQ, and I asked one of the top dogs over there, what do we need to do in America to try to imitate what you are doing here? He said the biggest mistake you are making in the United States is not making investment in research and development, because of the tremendous impact that has leading to new innovations. So cutting this funding, flat-lining the research and development funding is the wrong thing to do, where the Democrats are saying we need to make targeted investments into research and development, targeted investments in education, targeted investments into broadband penetration. Everybody in the country should have access to broadband in the next 5 years. The President wants to do alternative energy, and he says we are going to become energy competitive, and this is typical of the kind of leadership we are getting from this President. We are going to make this country energy-independent by 75 percent in the next 20 years. It is like, come on, Mr. President, let us go. We want to get things rolling in the country. We want to get things moving. We need your help, we need your leadership, and the country is dying for an alternative energy program; not to say we are going to be 75 percent in 2025. That is not the kind of leadership we need. Democrats have a plan to do it in 10 years. This is the broadband penetration I was talking about that is going on. These are broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants as of January 1 of last year. This is Korea, almost 25 percent; Hong Kong-China, almost 21 percent; Iceland, 15.5 percent; U.S., only 11 percent. If we want every child to have an access to education, we need to make sure that they are not getting left behind technologically, which is what happens in many of these neighborhoods and many of these rural areas. Kids and families who do not have access to these kinds of things.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely. Just to continue to reinforce your point on the PAYGO, on the fiscal responsibility. We call it PAYGO. It means pay as you go, which means you have to have the money to pay for it. If you have a program, you either have to raise taxes or cut the money from somewhere else to pay for it. Cut the energy subsidy if you need $14 billion or whatever to pay for Medicaid; find a way to control spending with the prescription drug program that is $700 billion and not doing anything to control the costs by allowing reimportation or allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down the drug prices for the Medicare program and take that money and pay for what you want to pay, whether it is some of the Medicaid cuts that came up, or whether it was some of the college PELL grants or students loan cuts that were made in this recent budget. But just to reinforce the PAYGO, the Democrats have supported PAYGO, period, and we have tried to get it reinstated time and time again. We will talk to our staff to make sure this gets up on our new Website. March 30, 2004, Representative Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California, tried to instruct the budget conferees to include pay as you go requirements in the 2006 budget resolution. The Republicans voted, almost in lockstep to a number, 209 to 209, which I think every Democrat voted for it, to block it and to reject the pay as you go requirements to be included to instruct the budget conferees, it is a lot of mumbo jumbo. But Democrats were for pay as you go; the Republicans blocked it. That was March 30, 2004. On May 5, 2004, Republicans voted by a vote of 208 to 215 to reject a motion by Representative Dennis Moore, a Democrat from Kansas. Again, we tried to get PAYGO established in the budget. Vote number 145. Then on November 18 of 2004, Republicans voted to block consideration of Mr. Stenholm's amendment from Texas to the debt limit increase. Last time they tried to get the debt increased, we wanted to say that if you are going to increase the debt, you better put the PAYGO requirements in. That was in 2004, and that was vote number 534. Three times Democrats have tried to institute fiscal discipline in this Chamber, and it has been rejected every time from the Republican majority. So, Mr. Speaker, if you hear a Republican come up here, although there is a handful that have been supportive, but the leadership on the Republican side has time and time again rejected our amendments, Democratic amendments, to try to put in place fiscal restraint on this runaway spending that is going on, mortgaging our children's future by borrowing the money from the Chinese Government in order to fund their huge and their runaway spending, and we are trying to fix this. We are just asking for an opportunity to implement some of these restraints that, as you stated earlier, were implemented in the '90s. I think George Herbert Walker Bush implemented them; Clinton; the Democratic Congress; the Republican Congress earlier that actually believed in fiscal discipline. This is a different outfit that we are dealing with now.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I just found out, too, today Wal-Mart is going to open another 1,500 stores. Now, Wal-Mart one way or the other. Now, that is not economic development. That is not economic growth, Wal-Mart jobs. Now, they may have a place in our society. You can argue it one way or another. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about this President saying that we are having real economic growth; and Wal-Mart is opening up 1,500 stores is not, to average Americans, actual economic growth. And as you stated with the budget and the deficits, let's just look at what this President has done. We saw the numbers here, that he has borrowed more than the previous 200 years. He has run up the four largest deficits in the history of the United States of America, an annual deficit of $378 billion in 2003, a deficit of $413 billion in 2004, a deficit of $318 billion in 2005, and a projected deficit this year of $423 billion. We are going to be spending more than we are taking in, and we are borrowing the money from the Chinese Government. Now, we are putting ourselves in a very difficult position, not only because we are borrowing money and we have to pay interest on it, which is reckless as could be, but strategically trying to deal with the Chinese Government, how can you be firm in your foreign policy when the Chinese Government is your bank? You can't go to your banker and negotiate from a position of weakness. If you have a lot of money and then you want to borrow some, you are in a good position. But if you go and you owe and you owe and you owe the bank, eventually the bank has the knife at your throat and you have got to deal on their terms, not on your terms. If you really need the money, well, then, the rate is going to go up because, hey, you're a little risky here. It is a risky loan to make. My point is that although we may have good credit, the more we borrow from the Chinese Government, then the weaker our positioning is when we need to deal with the nuclear situation in North Korea or we need help in Iraq or we need to deal with the Russians or we need to work on the human rights violations that are going on in China, as they are totally suppressing freedom of speech and they are arresting journalists, with Google and a lot of our American companies helping them. There is religious persecution in China. No human rights, no labor rights, no environmental protections in China. They are just dumping things in the river, like we did 30 or 40 or 50 years ago. So all of this borrowing is putting us in a real weak position to negotiate on a lot of other fronts. So we are weakening ourselves at home and weakening our position abroad. And if we want to be helpful in the world, we have to be strong at home. A stronger America starts right here in the United States.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What is interesting about the $2.2 trillion is that is more money than this country borrowed from the inception of the country to the beginning of Ronald Reagan's Presidency. So just in the Bush administration alone we have had to raise it $2.2 trillion, which is more than whatever the math would be from Reagan back to George Washington. This Republican Congress is setting records here on this issue.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yeah. And they are really good, because we have taken all of the information that Tom Manatos here, who is our go-to guy with the 30-something Working Group, kind of boiled it down, and you will be able to see our third-party validators. Now, for example, this poster here, now we have added the pictures, obviously, to help make our points to see that this is President Bush, he is responsible for the last 4 years, and all of those pictures of all of the other Presidents, Andrew Jackson, President Kennedy, there is Taft, Lincoln, they are all here. But at the bottom it says, source, where we cite our source, is U.S. Treasury. We are not making those numbers up. So go to the Website and you will be able to see this poster that our crack staff has put together.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is correct. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30- something. And this will be the Web page that pops up, 30-something Working Group. Then you go to the bottom and it says, our posters. So you will be able to get to our posters here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. No. That is yours, your kids'; each one of your kids, every citizen in the United States owes $27,000 for the national debt. And the President is going to ask Congress for the ability to go out and borrow even more so that each citizen can owe even more. Now, what we are trying to say here in the 30-something Group is that we have got to be responsible, we have got to balance the budget. We have got to make sure that we stop borrowing money from the Chinese Government, because ultimately it is going to lead to each citizen having to pay more of their paycheck in taxes to fund the debt, and we do not want that to happen. So our friends on the other side can talk about tax cuts all they want, but as they continue to go out and borrow money with the full faith and credit of the United States Government behind it, it means our taxpayers are good for it. So if you are home, you are good for it. We can count on you to raise your taxes so that you can give the Republican majority more money so that they can pay the bills. Now, would not it be nice, you know, if you are at home and you get your credit card statement, your credit card only allows you to borrow $10,000. Whew. Boy, I am at $10,000. I am at $9,990. Would it not be nice if I could just call up the credit card company and say, you know, I realize I am not making any more money, I am probably making less, I realize that health care costs have doubled, tuition and everything else, can you give me another $10,000 so I can borrow more? And really the worst thing that can happen is the credit card companies says, yes, go ahead. Then you owe them more. And you owe more interest. It is this downward spiral that we are in right now. It is ultimately robbing the future of our country. I want to kick it to you, but I just want to share one more statistic here that we have been using that I think is astonishing, astonishing. In the first 224 years of this country, from 1776 to 2000, we borrowed as a country $1 trillion from foreign interests. Okay. They were foreign holdings of U.S. debt, $1 trillion dollars in 224 years. President Bush and the Republican House and the Republican Senate in the last 4 years have borrowed $1.05 trillion. They borrowed more money from the Chinese, the Japanese, the Saudi Arabians in 4 years than this country has borrowed in 224 years. That is unbelievable to think that our friends on the other side, who many of them are friends, can say with a straight face, we are fiscally responsible. We are the party of fiscal responsibility. We want to cut taxes and reduce government burden. Reduce government burden? My goodness gracious. Borrowing money from the Chinese Government is somehow being fiscally responsible to the tune of $1 trillion? So this all adds up to a real cost of the kind of corruption that we have down here, because you give tax cuts to your rich friends, you give subsidies to the energy companies, you give subsidies to the pharmaceutical companies, but you are borrowing the money on the backs of your kids.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One of the interesting things when I was over in China in August, they were talking about the engineers. And they have this tremendous advantage on us as far as numbers go. And so we were asking what is the advantage that the U.S. engineers have. And they were saying, well, U.S. engineers they are just the best in the world, they are the most creative in the world, and they work in teams better than any other engineer, any other country. And it is funny, because this week, and we have talked about this before, but this week we had the school board associations down here. And wouldn't you know, the programs that are getting cut because of lack of funding, No Child Left Behind, the burden that is being pushed, the bonds that need to be noted and the funding that needs to be gathered at a local level in order to fund the local public schools across the country, the programs that are being cut are those programs that teach our kids how to be more creative and how to work in teams better. You hear a lot about the art programs getting cut, the music programs getting cut, the visual arts getting cut, the performing arts getting cut, language arts getting cut in a lot of these schools because they do not have the resources they need, or the school districts or the school systems are not organized the way they need to be organized. And then you also see a lot of pay-to-play: $350. Well, a lot of families do not have an extra $350 to get their kids in activities. And if you have two or three kids, you are talking about a thousand bucks. That is a lot of money, I hate to break it to a lot of our friends on the other side who do not seem to understand this. So the very advantage that we have, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face. And those are the kinds of investments that we need to make, not only invest, but restructure and reorganize the way that our education system runs today. And I think if we do a couple of these things and have the courage to lead, I think we are going to be able to do it. Part of this, too, we need the parents involved; we need the parents to be accountable. We need the parents to be there with their kids. We need to make sure that the parents know that their kids have to do the homework. This is going to be a team effort. This is going to be us doing our job, the parents doing their job, the local school district doing their job, everybody coming together if we are going to be competitive in the 21st century. That is the only way this is going to happen. And I think it is important, one final point here. I think it is important that if we are going to ask kids to get involved in the math and science and engineering and chemistry and all these things and areas of studies that we need them to get involved in, there needs to be a goal. And I think, really, the goal for the next generation is what Mr. Bartlett was talking about a little while back, about what are we going to do with the alternative energy realm; who is going to develop the new and the latest technologies? Is this going to be a national effort? Not in 2025, Mr. President. Now. You know, we went to the Moon in less than a decade. And it is going to take us 20 years to figure out how we are going to become energy independent so we can get out of these entanglements that we find ourselves in in the Middle East and in other countries.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. No.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely, I do.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yeah. We are getting really high-tech here. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. The innovation agenda that you mentioned will be available so you can hear the new ideas that the Democrats are coming up with. And I think if you look through this, I mean, this is exciting stuff. And you know, I am not just toeing the party line here. I am very, very excited about what we are offering and what we get to talk about over the course of the next year. As we ask the people of this country who put us in charge of the House of Representatives for oversight purposes, with the war, and everything else that is going on, we need to make sure that there is balance in government, and I think that the folks at home and the folks, Members of Congress and their offices, will be able to come to the Web site, see what we are talking about. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. You go to the bottom, you can see all the posters that we have up. You can see our innovation agenda. We have got a lot of really good things going on, and we are going to keep plugging away over the course of the next year to try to let the people know at home that we have good ideas that we want to help move this country forward. And one final point that I would like to make regarding all of this is that the country of China has 1.3 billion people. The country of India has over a billion people. And we have 300 million in this country. The Democratic agenda, whether we are talking about energy, investments, education, health care, we are about pulling our country together as a community, as a family and moving forward and knowing that you cannot compete against that many people and not be unified. And what the Democratic innovation agenda, our agenda on health care, energy independence, whatever it may be, is about pulling everybody together, making sure that every kid in the country has a quality education, has health care, has an opportunity to live and work and create wealth in the United States and live the American Dream as they see it. So, again, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. Got to give a shout out to our guy from Florida who was not able to make it here tonight, Mr. Meek. It is never the same without him. Sometimes it is never the same good, sometimes it is never the same bad. But we miss him here tonight.