Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Please. Show them. Go ahead. I yield to my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The gentleman is exactly correct. This is great to have the gentleman here because, obviously, he brings in a new perspective from the Science Committee, which reinforces a lot of the things we have been saying. So we appreciate the gentleman being here. One of the things we have to add onto this, as if this is not enough for a 22-year-old to have to overcome, $17,500 of debt, $3,000 in credit card debt, so you are already over $20,000 in debt before you even get out of school, let alone if you want to get a law degree, a master's or a Ph.D., or whatever it may be, would be an additional burden. In a weak economy that is not growing the kinds of jobs necessary to move our country forward and to maintain our economic superiority, add to that the $27,000 that every single citizen owes to pay the $8 trillion in debt that we have in the United States of America. Our friends on the other side, the Republican majority, had to raise the debt ceiling to over $8 trillion, and each citizen owes $27,000. So we try to put this in perspective for people who are having babies today, and our generation who have young kids, 2 or 3 years old. Run this number out 20 years. If you have a 2-year-old, run that number out 20 years at a 57 percent increase every 5 years. What does that number look like 22 years from now and what does the debt look like 22 years from now if we keep running these huge structural deficits, paying interest on the loan? Pull it out. Get it. Get it right now. Let us get this thing up here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. There it is. That is not Kendrick Meek saying that or Ms. Wasserman Schultz. These are CEOs.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely. And if we look at the number of engineers and scientists that a lot of these other countries are graduating, last year alone China graduated 600,000 engineers. We graduated 70,000, with most of them foreign born. So to put additional barriers up, an additional burden or two on someone who is trying to construct financially a way to go to school, it makes absolutely zero sense economically for our country. Look at what the GI Bill did for this country, because we had educated people going out into the work force as doctors and lawyers and scientists and engineers. Look what the space program did. The goal of sending people to the Moon was to motivate and organize a country in math and science and physics and a variety of other areas that led to tremendous developments and discoveries that otherwise would not have been, and that led to great economic growth. So the gentleman is exactly right.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think we are not alone here, and I think there are some conservatives who are out there who agree with what we are saying here. We say it all the time during our Special Orders. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing. This is about putting the interests of the country before your own particular party. That is what we are trying to do here. This is a quote from Cal Thomas, who is one of the most conservative columnists in the country, who says, ``Here is a suggestion to the Republican majority. Don't start with the poor, start with the rich.'' That is Cal Thomas talking. And let me just put this up here. This is the tax cut, my friends. This is the tax cut. This is what people who make over $440,000 a year get, and this is what our brothers and sisters get who make $20,000, $35,000, and $40,000. Why can we not ask these people? Why do our leaders not have the courage to ask these people? We know they contribute to their campaigns. We know they get corporate welfare. I bet many of these people are executives in the oil companies who got $16 billion in corporate subsidies. We know that. We are sure that some of these people who make all this money and are getting the big tax cut represent the pharmaceutical industry that are getting $100 million in corporate subsidies. We are confident that the executives of the big agribusinesses are receiving some of this tax cut, and they are also getting corporate subsidies for that. Why can the Republican leadership in this Chamber, in the Senate, and in the White House not ask these folks to give up just a small little wee bit of this, just a little bit of this so that we can make sure that Medicaid, Medicare, which is on the table in the Senate version, $80 billion over the next 10 years is proposed to be cut out of that. The Republican Study Committee wants to cut even more and push the prescription drug benefit back, not do anything to reduce the cost. We are making decisions that are hurting these people because we do not have the courage to ask those people who have benefited most from society to give just a little bit back.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I wonder, and we have asked this question before here, I wonder where the religious right organizations are that during the election were so engaged and involved in the Christian Coalition and promoting Christian values on a couple of issues. I cannot think of any more pronounced Christian values than taking care of those among you who cannot take care of themselves, for whatever reason. It is stunning to me, growing up Catholic and spending 12 years in Catholic schools with nuns and priests and brothers, that the issue of poverty that you see more in the Bible than probably any other social issue, that somehow the silence is deafening here on these issues of us trying to help poor people and the majority actually causing harm to them. All these organizations that help put these folks in office are lost and cannot find their way. I do not want to say that their membership is lost, because the people I go to church with, the people who represent Christian social organizations in my community, are very, very, very concerned about this. I would hope that in the course of the next 48 hours we are able to bring this to their attention so that maybe we can put a stop to this before it actually harms young children.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, this is the moral argument of our generation. I agree with you 100 percent, but I think there is an economic component of this, too. If we are going to be a great nation economically, we need to have healthy children, who are going to be able to go to school and learn so that they can become scientists and engineers, so that we can drive this economy through the 21st century. As much as it is a moral imperative, it is an economic imperative that will continue to make the United States of America a strong country economically and militarily.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We will also post this on our Web site and make it available.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes, sir. 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Send us your ideas, your comments, your thoughts. We appreciate them. We do read what you send in. We are going to be introducing some new methodology in the next week or so. 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. We thank our good friend from Missouri for joining us tonight.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. From China, from Saudi Arabia.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Half a million dollars and up. So you get corporate welfare from the public taxpayer. Then you get tax cuts for people making more than half a million dollars. And then the money that does get sent here, we give it to Iraq and create a welfare state. And then we do not even have the money to give away; we go and borrow it from a foreign country. We have borrowed more money in the last 4 years from a foreign country than we have in the last 224 years.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So let us see if we can tie this all up. Our country gives billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the most profitable industries in the world that are having the most profitable quarters in the history of mankind. They are then giving tax cuts that go primarily to the top 1 percent, who are probably executives of the oil companies and the pharmaceutical companies.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we do not swear to the Iraqi Constitution. We do not come here to represent the Iraqi people. First and foremost it is the United States. So you are telling me that we are giving money to the Iraqis, grant money; but if we have a natural disaster in the United States, we ask the American citizens to fill out a form so they can maybe get a loan. And if an American citizen wants to go to college, they got to take out a loan. So we are loaning money to the American people so our kids end up with $17,500 in college debts because we loan them the money; but when it comes to Iraq, we have created a welfare state.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yeah, because I thought they said that we could, did they not say something about loaning them? Well, we wanted to loan them the money, right?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Over 10 years. This is the same time that the Republican Conference wants to pass $70 billion in tax cuts; and we know when they give tax cuts, who they give them to. But I think it is important, because I forget the number of what the Republican Conference here in the House wants to cut Medicare to, and what that number may be.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan) to continue his coherent and intelligent argument on behalf of research and development for alternative energy sources and alternative technologies to reduce our dependence on oil.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One of the provisions, as you said, was giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services who basically in his department administers the Medicare part D, this new prescription drug bill, giving him the ability to go to Merck or Pfizer or one of the major drug companies and basically say, on behalf of these millions of Medicare recipients, if you want the contract to sell them drugs, you need to sit down with me and talk price. The Democrats were not saying we need to create a whole new bureaucracy. We did not say we have got to put a whole new office building in Washington, D.C. to do it. Just give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to go and basically negotiate down these drug prices.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, I think this brings up a real contrast. First, we have made it a point here in the 30- Something Working Group that this is not about party. This is about doing what is best for the American people. Because together America can be better. I just want to take this opportunity, having talked to all of you already tonight, to just say we hope that the moderate Republicans will stand up, because they can have a tremendous voice in this body. Not in a partisan way but in a way that actually acts on behalf of the American people. We hope that those moderate Republicans step up to bat and help the Democrats moderate some of these drastic cuts that are going to the most disadvantaged and the middle-class people in this country. I think it is important as the Senate has made cuts out of the Finance Committee of almost $6 billion, the Medicare program if it comes out of the Senate as is now, $6 billion in cuts. And then the Republican Study Committee, the most conservative people in this Chamber, want to delay the prescription drug bill. Here is an opportunity where I think they could maybe take a Democrat initiative, a Democratic Party initiative, to reduce the cost of the Medicare prescription drug program. Instead of cut it and reduce benefits for seniors, why not put a provision in the Medicare prescription drug bill that says you can negotiate down the drug prices. Give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down like the Veterans' Administration does. Why not let the Secretary of Health and Human Services do that? Why not let the reimportation from Canada to help reduce the cost of drugs? There are a couple of provisions here that will help reduce the cost without reducing the benefits to the Medicare recipients.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That did not happen. The Republican majority in this Chamber rejected the proposal.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Just a reminder to send us e-mails at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov, any articles or whatever, Madam Speaker, from our colleagues here so that we can talk about them on air. That is 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, can we just say, if you have worked in the White House for 5 years and you are the chief of staff of the Vice President, indicted on five counts of lying and obstruction of justice, and you have the deputy chief of staff of the President of the United States lie to the American people on two occasions, you have the Vice President of the United States mislead on several occasions Tim Russert and the American people, you do not need ethics courses. You need to be fired. Okay. This is not brain surgery. This is probably a basic management technique. If you lie to the American people and you work at the White House, you should be fired, and there should be no place for you in representing the public.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Medicare Part B is the senior citizen program, the Medicare program that insures our parents and our grandparents. This is where the Republican Study Committee is going to go to pay for the tax cuts, to pay for the $16 billion in subsidies that they are giving to the oil companies, to pay for the subsidies that they are basically giving to the prescription drugs. They are going to go to our senior citizens and ask them to give up $4.6 billion in 2006 and $84 billion over the course of the next 10 years. These are senior citizens that, as I am sure they are in your district, whose pension is not going up, if they can even keep their pension. Health care costs obviously are going up here, the cost of natural gas and gasoline, heating oil, all of this is affecting how our seniors can actually survive day-to-day; and our friends on the other side are making another wrong decision by going after them and asking them to foot the bill.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Let us look at another provision on here that the Republican Study Committee is also looking to do: Increase the Medicare Part B premium by $4.6 billion.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That woman probably called off work and there was a ripple effect.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just want to expound on that point for just one second. Those people who will see an increase in their copay will then not go to utilize the care and the service, and they will end up like Americans who do not have any health care, they will end up in an emergency room much sicker than they were when they originally could have had the problem taken care of because they were covered under Medicaid, and the taxpayer is going to end up footing the bill in the long run. We are not making this argument solely for moral reasons, but this is an economic argument that is going to save the taxpayer money in the long run and I think the Republican majority has proven in many ways that they do not know how to govern, and one of the reasons is they would rather spend more money on the tail end than do the right thing and spend it up front.