Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The bulk purchasing power, some studies say, would at least save 10 to 15 percent. I have seen some people say it could save up to 20 percent. So you take $700 billion and you take 10 or 15 or 20 percent of that, you are talking upwards of saving the American taxpayer over the course of the next few years $140 billion that could go into Katrina relief.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are not going away. We will be here every night if we have to. The problem is, and here is the problem that hurts me the most, is that the people who make a half a million dollars, a million dollars a year, they make it because of the benefits that have been given to them and the opportunity that has been given to them by our veterans, to be able to take advantage of a capitalistic system, to be able to take advantage of a democratic system with a strong military to make sure that you can make solid business investment and make money. Bill Gates did not invent the Internet. It was the public tax dollars that went to do the research. Bill Gates capitalized on the Internet. So he has a responsibility to keep the system going for the next guy, but to do this and to not have the guts to pay for these people, to pay for veterans' health care benefits.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, one of the decisions that is being made down here as we cut the vets' budget, there is a chart that explains where some of the tax cuts are going and you will see of all the tax cuts down here, $34,000 to $54,000, $840. And people who make $440,000 a year and up, $87,600. Now, to put this into ``middle America speak,'' the Democrats are for reducing a small little portion of this, not even the whole thing, but asking these people who make a million dollars a year or more to just give up a wee little bit of that up there, just a small little tiny part of that so that we can fund some of these other priorities that we have agreed as a country are important, like making sure our veterans have the proper amount of health care. And if, as a country, the leadership in this Chamber and the leadership in the White House, especially in the executive branch, if they do not have the guts to ask this person who makes a half a million dollars a year to give up just a small amount, a few thousand dollars of their tax cut to pay for veterans health care or to pay for Medicare, if the President of the United States cannot find it in his Constitution to ask this person, then I believe he is failing his responsibility and his oath of office. And I really believe that because that is about leadership. To go to the person who does not have a lobby group on K Street to come over here and lobby us, okay, that is a major problem. And at the same time as these tax cuts are going on, we are cutting student loans, we are increasing the burden on our kids who go to college. And if the Republican majority--as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) pointed out, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) is a freshmen. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I are in our second term. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has been here four or five terms. He is on his fifth term, I believe. If the Republican majority thinks that we are going to sit up in our office or if we are going to go home and lie on our couch and turn on C-SPAN and just watch this happen, they have got another think coming. We are going to come to the floor every night if we can and we are going to grab every hour that we possibly can because there are 700,000 people in northeast Ohio that count on me to come down here and talk about this stuff, because they are on the other end of this stick. Fifty percent of the people in my district did not even get a tax cut. They did not get any of this stuff, none of it. Fifty percent of the taxpayers in my district did not get any of this stuff. And if this administration and the leadership in this House does not think that we are going to come to the floor and talk about this inequity, about them cutting Medicaid services, which in the long term costs these taxpayers even more money, if they think we are going to sit by while tuition goes up 57 percent over the last 5 years and not say anything, they have got another think coming.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, will the gentleman be willing to support an independent commission for Katrina, a bipartisan commission?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we want a commitment from the gentleman, if he is willing to take responsibility, to establish with us a bipartisan committee like the 9/11 Commission to oversee Katrina in which Democrats and Republicans both would agree and both have equal power in the commission like the 9/11 Commission.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate that, but the bottom line is this, my good friend from California: Your committee is controlled by the majority party. It is not a bipartisan equal commission like the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission was the most successful commission we have had in trying to address a major terrorist attack in the United States. Let us put a bipartisan commission together and look at Katrina.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, our friend from Florida was talking about what is going on and how personal this is. I mean, we have an obligation here. What is going on today is the Republican majority has created a welfare state. They have created a welfare state. They have created a welfare state here in the United States, but the welfare state is for a very small group, corporations. Sixteen billion dollars in the last few months of corporate welfare went to the oil companies, the most profitable quarters they have had in decades; and public tax money was given to the tune of $16 billion to subsidize them. Pharmaceutical companies have gotten over $100 billion in average people's tax money, sent down here. The Republican majority gave it to the pharmaceutical companies. So we have a welfare state in the United States of America. But we also are creating a welfare state in Iraq. While we are cutting free and reduced lunch and Medicaid and Medicare, health care programs for United States citizens, we have opened up 110 primary health care centers in Iraq. We have educated 2,000 health officials. Three point two million kids in Iraq have been vaccinated. We have rehabbed 2,717 schools and trained 36,000 teachers. Now maybe we should be doing this because we invaded the country and bombed the heck out of it. So maybe we should be doing it. But when they are giving billions to the wealthiest corporations in the country and they are cutting free and reduced lunch for kids and they are doubling the cost of college tuition and raising the fees for student loans to the tune of $5,000 over the life of the loan, they are doing what is best for the Republican Party and they are doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do for the United States of America. And let me tell the my colleagues why, Mr. Speaker. The Chinese government in the country of China produced 600,000 engineers last year. We produced 70,000, half of those engineers foreign born. How are we going to stimulate our economy, create new jobs, innovate the new technologies that are needed to be innovated so that we could keep on the cutting edge of a vibrant global economy if we are not investing into the very people who are going to create that wealth? We cannot ask poor, unhealthy, uneducated kids to go into the workforce and create wealth for us. But yet we are making the investment in Iraq and we are giving away billions in tax dollars to the oil companies and to the pharmaceutical companies. That system is corrupt. That is a corrupt system. Corrupt. And the way it is being administered and the way government is being administered is at a level of incompetence that we have never really ever seen. With the war, the execution of the aftermath of the war, the rehab, the nation building, complete incompetence on behalf of the guys who wear the suits and ties. Complete incompetence. The response to Katrina, the highest level of incompetence possible because they put people in charge of FEMA who were political cronies, and the level of cronyism in this administration is really higher than we have really ever seen. And they are not cronies because they know the administration. They are cronies because they get the job and they are not competent. We all know if one gets a political job and they get to hire people that they are going to hire people they know because this is a business about loyalty. But we also have to hire people who are competent. And Mr. Brown, Brownie, ran an Arabian horse show or something like that, and then he is in charge of FEMA, the point person for emergencies in the United States? Now this could have very well been a terrorist attack. There could have been explosives. There could have been bombs on the levees instead of a Category 4 hurricane. And our response would have had to have been the same, and it was not a good response. It was not an adequate response. So the level of incompetency here is unreal. It is a corrupt system that takes care of corporations and ignores every other American. I just want to tell my colleagues it would be nice if someone on the other side, if someone in the Republican Party, would just stand up and take responsibility. We get lectured all the time about personal responsibility. Please someone stand up and take responsibility, because they are weakening the country. They are weakening the country. And we have a constitutional obligation to try to offer solutions.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentlewoman will yield, this is not personal. Let us be absolutely clear about this. This is business. This is about the business of the American people. When we have the Chief of Staff of the Vice President lie to a Grand Jury on two counts and of perjury, two counts of false statements to Federal agents and of obstruction of justice; when we have the Deputy Chief of Staff of the President lie to the American people on two separate occasions; when we have the Vice President of the United States knowingly make a comment to Scooter Libby that he knows about the ambassador's wife and then goes on Meet the Press and says he does not know, this is not about Democrat and Republican, this is about the future of the country. This country is going in the wrong direction, and every ounce of energy in the White House is geared towards covering up the outing of a CIA agent. So this is not personal. This is about the 700,000 people we each represent and the 300 million people that are in this country. It is about the wage gap, the gap between rich and poor, the increased number of poor people in our society and the lack of an adequate response to the greatest natural disaster in the history of the country. That is about executing our constitutional obligation, our constitutional responsibility. This is this is not personal, Mr. Speaker. This is not personal. This is about us as elected representatives in the United States Congress, who swear to uphold the Constitution, wanting to take the country in a new direction, wanting to change the way business is done down here and to get rid of the corruption and the cronyism and the incompetent leadership. That is what this whole thing is about. It is not personal.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be back here on the House floor on behalf of the 30-Something Working Group. We have been coming to the floor, Mr. Speaker, now for a couple of years weekly; and over the past several months we have turned it into a nightly, and sometimes bi-nightly, event, where we come down here and we talk about what is going on in the Nation's capital. We do not only talk about what is going on with regard to people who are our age, within the 30-Something Working Group, although the original mission of our group was to explain and to lay out the facts for people who are in our generation, in their 30s with families, and how the decisions that are being made here affect that group of people. Since then, we have broadened this really to touch on all of the issues, because it seemed as we got further and further into the budget cuts, the tax program that the Republicans have, the war, the inability to address the natural disasters, we have broadened our mission to deal with all of these issues, because all of these issues hit home to not only people who are in their 30s but people across the country. We have come to find that the decisions over the past several years that we have been here, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I are on our third year. The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) is a freshman member. But over the past several years we have seen up close and certainly personal the absolute failure of the Republican party and their ability to govern, the total and complete incompetence. This is not a party issue. The only reason we have to talk about parties is because the Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. And when you are running $500 billion deficits a year, you are spending $1.5 billion a week in Iraq, creating a welfare state there, you are cutting taxes on people who make billions of dollars a year here in the U.S., you take public tax money and you give it, to the tune of $16 billion in the last few months, this Congress has taken taxes from average, middle-class people. You sent it down here, Mr. Speaker. The average people sent it down here. And this Republican Congress and Republican Senate and Republican President give that tax money, $16 billion worth, to the oil industry. The most profitable industry in the world right now is the oil industry, and public tax money is going to subsidize the oil industry. Then our friends in the Republican party go down the ``shake-down street,'' K Street, where all the lobbyists are. Anyone who has been to Washington, you go to K Street, that is where the big major lobby firms are. The Republicans then, after giving the public tax money in subsidies to the oil companies, they go out to ``shake-down street'' and they shake down the lobbyists for money. So the lobbyists then give the money to the Republican party so they can spend it on their campaigns. And we have a big hole here because the only group missing in this equation is the American people, the American people. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek).

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The big time, the prime time.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the point that I think that we have been trying to make here in the 30-something group. You cannot put your political party above the interests of the country; and if you out a CIA agent because it may benefit your political party, you are wrong. You are wrong. You cannot do that because it weakens the country; and you did not just out her. You outed every contact she has made in the last 20 years. You outed the front company in Boston that the CIA had. They had a front company. They talked about her being at the Belgium University. So any American now at the University of Belgium is now suspect if they have any contacts. This has ramifications well beyond what the average person could even understand, well beyond what we could even understand, because this woman was working on behalf of the United States of America and the one quote that sticks with me is the one CIA operative that said, outing a CIA agent is the moral equivalent of outing a military unit in a forward area. So in Baghdad, they are over there, it would be like Karl Rove or Scooter Libby saying to the insurgency in Iraq, the Marines are coming right over there in about a half an hour; that is where they are coming. That would be unacceptable. But in the covert world, that is exactly what Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and all the minions over in the executive branch did. It was a coordinated effort to out this woman because they did not like what her husband was saying about the war, and that is wrong. That is wrong. If you do not believe us, because we love our third-party validators, this is Melissa who was a 14-year covert CIA agent. She says, We are talking about lies and we are talking about capabilities. We do our work, we risk our lives, we risk lives of our agents in order to protect our country; and when something like this happens, it cuts to the very core of what we do. We are not being undermined by the North Koreans. We are not being undermined by the Russians. We are being undermined by officials in our own government. That I find galling. Could you imagine being a CIA operative somewhere in the world right now and you think, do they got my back in D.C.? Do they got my back? Or are you afraid that if I get caught up in the wrong political debate, somehow I may get outed by my own government? That is what this is all about, and to have the kind of deceit and lies take place out of the executive branch, let us just look at this. Official A in the indictment, now we are not making this up. This is right out of the indictment for Scooter Libby. Official A, which the administration has admitted is Karl Rove, on July 10 of 2003, the middle of the summer, Official A, which is Karl Rove, advised Scooter Libby of a conversation that he had earlier that week with Bob Novak, the columnist, in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. Libby was advised by Official A, by Karl Rove, that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife. So Karl Rove told Scooter Libby in July of 2003 that Novak was going to be writing a story. Now, September of 2003, a couple of months later, Karl Rove says to ABC News to the question Andrea Owen asked, Did you ever have any knowledge of the CIA agent or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press? Any knowledge or did you leak it. Karl Rove said no. He lied to the American people. He did not lie to Andrea Owen. He lied to the American people. We know from the indictment he told Scooter Libby Novak was going to write about it, and 2 months later he says he does not know anything about it. Then he does a CNN interview just July of this year; and he says, I will repeat what I said to ABC News when this whole thing broke some number of months ago. I did not know her name, and I did not leak her name. Well, if you go back to the indictment, Official A, who is Karl Rove, advised Libby of the conversation that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife. He lied. Now, he is in the White House making decisions on behalf of the United States of America.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We cannot have it, unacceptable behavior, unbecoming of a White House official. Then I am going to wrap this up. I am going to go right through this so we can get everybody involved here. Then not only did Karl Rove and Libby lie to the American people, they lied to Scott McClellan, because he came out 2 months after the indictment and said what everyone already knew, and McClellan says, Those individuals, Rove, Libby, Abrams, assured me they were not involved with this. Another lie. Now we have to change our language a bit to respect the rules of the House and respect the office which we are about to discuss. This is out of the indictment. On or about June 12, 2003, that same summer that we were just talking about, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA in the counterproliferation division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Scooter Libby was the chief of staff of the Vice President of the United States who has been indicted under five counts: two counts of making false statements, two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. So the Vice President on June 12 told Mr. Libby about Joe Wilson's wife. Then 2 months later, in September, the Vice President is on Tim Russert. Okay.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. No, you guys have the floor all the time.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the gentleman just said. I did not know the gentleman was the one who tried to offer the amendment. It is good for the 30-Somethings to understand to put a face with the idea. That idea to just negotiate down drug prices on a $700 billion prescription drug bill, now that may save 10 percent, that may save 20 percent, some people would say that would save 30 percent. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that we could save 20 percent of a $700 billion bill. That is $140 billion that we would have here to either return back to the middle class in the form of middle-class tax cuts or to fully fund student loans or to fully fund the Pell grant or No Child Left Behind. $140 billion goes a pretty long way, and that is what the Democrats want to do. We have a Member here who is willing to sit in committee until 4:00 in the morning to try to get that provision tacked on to the bill, and you get shot down. But we are here to say that we are fighting on behalf, and I was telling my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), earlier, there is an old Irish saying, Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it? And I believe that is what the mentality of the 30-Something group. We are ready to scrap here. We are not going to sit back and let anyone push us around and let anyone tell us that we do not have ideas. Because we do have ideas. And just because the Republican majority does not like them, just because it may be contrary to their fund-raising opportunities, that does not mean we are going to stop. I have to go catch a plane, and I am sorry about that because I would love to sit here and continue this discussion. But let me say, in closing, that the Democratic party wants to take this country into a new direction. We want to change the way things are going in Washington right now, and that is part of what this is all about. We also want to say to the American people that when you put us in charge, we are going to put the interests of the country before the interests of our own party. The system that we just talked about where the pharmaceutical companies are getting middle-class taxes, they come to Washington and it returns to the oil companies and to the pharmaceutical companies, that system is inherently corrupt. And that when our Republican majority friends appoint someone who is in charge of an Arabian horses outfit to run FEMA, we are going to end the cronyism, and we are going to end the incompetence and the incompetent way they govern. We want to take the country in a new direction. I thank my friends. I thank my friends. I thank my friends.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would like to introduce one of my mentors in Congress, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), an outstanding leader on a variety of issues, a recent Member of the Ways and Members Committee, a former quarterback at East Hartford High School.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think there is a tremendous, huge magnificent moral component to this that our friends who in many instances invoke their religion to pass legislation tend to forget when it is dealing with the poor in our society. They forget their religion. But there is also an economic argument here. We talked in the last hour about the Chinese producing 600,000 engineers. And the country of India, producing 350,000 engineers, and the United States only producing 70,000 engineers. The reason the Democrats are fighting for the free and reduced lunch program and student loans and increased funding for Pell grants and Medicaid is because we need healthy educated kids so that they can go to college and become engineers and create wealth so that we can keep this great democracy alive. This is not just a moral argument. It is. But it is not just a moral argument. This is an economic argument. Who do we suppose is going to come up with the next alternative energy source? Who do we suppose is going to come up with the next great invention that is going to lead to more manufacturing in the United States of America, if we are not educating everybody? In our cities, my friends, when we have 75 percent of our kids who live in our cities living in poverty, they are never going to be on the economic playing field for us. And we need 11 on both sides of the ball, my good friend. We need linebackers and cornerbacks and strong safeties and linemen. We need quarterbacks and running backs and tight ends. And when they only educate half, you are losing, you are walking onto the field with only half a team.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The next entrepreneur, the next business person, the next person that is going to go out and create wealth. And that is the whole thing with the Democrats. We are trying to convince the Republican Party that together America can do better for all of us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And the money we are borrowing, this is the ultimate irony of the whole deal, and this is why we say that I did not hear our friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), when he was down here take responsibility for that. It was conspicuously absent from the argument. The most ironic piece of this whole ordeal is that that money that we are borrowing from China and Saudi Arabia and Japan is going to fund $16 billion in subsidies to the oil companies. That money that we are borrowing from China is going to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry to the tune of $100 billion. So the MO of the Republican majority is to go borrow money from the Chinese and take that money and give it to corporate America, and then go to corporate America and shake them down, go out to shakedown street on K Street, shake down corporate America for campaign contributions to run the election, and the group that is absent here, the American people.