Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Maybe their plan was this: they said we will keep Brownie on, pay him $148,000, and when there is a situation, we will go to Brownie and ask, what do you think we should do? He will tell you. Then they do the complete opposite. Maybe that you is how they are using him, do you think?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think it really comes down to the fact that every decision that is made by this Congress, by the Republican-controlled Congress, by the Republican-controlled Senate, and by our Republican President is based on supporting and lifting up the Republican Party. I hate to break it to them, but this is not about the Republican Party; this is about America. This is about what is best for America. You talk about violating basic House rules, and every time they have done that, every time they have kept the roll call open at 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning; I mean, last year, I cannot remember what vote it was, but we were here until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. It was on the prescription drug bill, because we had to kick over $700 billion to the pharmaceutical industry, one of the most profitable industries in the whole entire world, them and oil, and the reason is they put the Republican Party before the country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes, no doubt about it. We maybe could have prevented, if we had been really on the stick and really open, we maybe could have prevented some of the things that are happening. I think this really goes to the fact that the Republican majority believe that the government and the taxpayer dollars that we have here are just for them. It is for them to build their party up. It is for them to use it to build up the Republican Party. I am sorry, but my citizens in my district do not pay taxes so that the leaders of the House, the Republican leaders of the House, can go out to Shake Down Street out there on K Street, just a cab ride away where all the lobbyists are, and go and shake down the lobbyists. I mean, when a Democrat applies for a job, and the leaders on the Republican majority say to the lobbyists, you cannot give that job to a Democrat because we will not do business with you then. And when you come to the American people and you try to say with a straight face about fiscal discipline, but when we are here at 3:00 in the morning, and arms are getting twisted to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, and the Republican majority does not have the courage to go to the pharmaceutical industry and say, listen, we want to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, but we want to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the opportunity, the power to negotiate on behalf of the Medicare recipients to get the costs under control. The Republicans put a provision in the Medicare bill that explicitly said the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not allowed to negotiate down the drug prices. Can you imagine that? Can you believe that? And then only 25 Republican Members voted against it. Then you come to the energy bill, and with the energy bill, you have billions of dollars in there to subsidize the oil companies, and a major oil company comes out today and talks about 89 percent profits in the last quarter, $10 billion, and you are getting public tax dollars from middle-class Americans who live in Youngstown, Ohio, one of the poorest areas in the country, you are taking their tax dollars and you are giving it to the oil companies. Now, a third-party validator, right here, Cal Thomas, one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country right now, suggests to our friends on the other side, to the Republican majority, he is commenting on the offsets to pay for Katrina, and the Republican majority is taking the money from Medicaid, free and reduced lunch, and college students. Cal Thomas says, here is a suggestion: Do not start with the poor, start with the rich. That is Cal Thomas. That is not Kendrick Meek, that is not Tim Ryan, that is not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, that is one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country. He also goes on to say, talking about using government as their own little sandbox that they can play in and as a welfare state for corporations, because this is corporate welfare. Cal Thomas, conservative Republican. Did I mention he is a conservative Republican?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are going to give you public tax dollars for the energy companies, public, through subsidies, billions of dollars in the energy bill. You are going to raise money for Republican candidates. It is that simple. Go out and shake down K Street. That should be called not Operation K Street; it should be Operation Shakedown. So the American people should be outraged at this, corporate welfare to the most profitable industries in the country with your tax dollars, and the Republican majority uses it to raise money for the Republican Party. They are putting their party, the Republican Party, before the country. And that is when it has got to stop. You did not come to Congress to rubber-stamp this stuff. The people in my district did not send me here to rubber-stamp this stuff. They sent us here to end it, because the average worker, the average small business person in every single instance, health care, energy, gas prices, natural gas, pharmaceuticals, wages, on every single count they are forgotten. They are forgotten because we spent so much, the Republicans spent so much time giving out public tax dollars, corporate welfare so that they can increase their campaign coffers and run 30-second ads. And they go out and shake down K Street. It is ridiculous.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, let us look. My friend brings up Iraq, which is a perfect example. We just talked about corporate welfare to the oil companies; corporate welfare to pharmaceutical companies; tax cuts that go primarily to those people who make over a million dollars a year. And this President does not have the guts, and the Republican Congress, they do not have the guts to ask the wealthiest people in the country to contribute. Two wars and major natural disasters, poverty is increasing, the tuition cost has doubled over the last 4 or 5 years, and this Republican Congress, they do not have the guts to go ask the billionaires in the country to contribute. But we are going to give them public tax dollars to support their corporations. But there is more welfare going on. Iraq has become a United States welfare state. Look what is going on here. 110 primary care centers built in Iraq with American tax dollars. Okay. 2,000 health educators trained with the American tax dollar. 3.2 million children vaccinated in Iraq with the American tax dollar. Great. Super. We went in there, we broke Iraq, we buy it. That is our responsibility. But back at the ranch, $10 billion-plus, as I have talked to a few of our friends on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, $10 billion-plus cuts in Medicaid for American kids. American citizens. $252 million cut for health care professionals; $94 million cut for community health centers in the United States of America. Student loans. We are building 2,700 schools that have been rehabbed in Iraq; 36,000 teachers and administrators trained in Iraq. We are cutting student loans in the United States. Iraq is a welfare state. So if you are sitting on the couch listening to the 30-something Group right now, and these are all third-party validators, this is not us making this stuff up. Cal Thomas, the conservative Republican columnist, agrees with us. You see a Republican-controlled government, one-party government spending your tax dollars, giving your tax dollars to the oil companies, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the billionaires in the world, and/or in the United States, and creating a welfare state in Iraq while you are cutting health care in education and research and development. Even the Centers for Disease Control, our conservative friends on the other side want to cut the Centers for Disease Control at a time when we have this bird flu epidemic waiting in the wings. We can do a better job. The Democratic Party has proposals. We want to create a million new engineers and scientists in the next 10 years. We want to build magnetic levitation trains in the United States and connect the United States of America. We want to invest in the research and development and create alternative energy sources so we no longer have to worry about being dependent on foreign oil. And that is part of the magnetic lev trains. We want arts and sports in all of our schools for all of our kids because we recognize in the 21st century that learning a musical instrument helps you with math. And when you are good at math, you become an engineer or a scientist, and you will go out and generate wealth. We make good investments. The Democratic Party makes good investments. We balanced the budget in 1993 with not one Republican vote. And President Clinton made a lot of tough decisions, and the Democratic Congress made a lot of tough decisions. And, quite frankly, some Members lost their seat over it. But it led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of this country. And I do not think there is an American out there that would not say, boy, I would love to go back to the late 1990s. Boy would that not be great. Portfolio was up. Everything was up that should have been up. Everything was down that should have been down. But meanwhile, our Republican friends keep this culture of corporate welfare and corruption and keep propping up the Republican Party, instead of propping up the United States of America, and being more concerned about shaking down the lobbyists on K Street, instead of propping up the United States. The Democrats want to take this country in a new direction. We want to provide new leadership. We want to change the direction of the country, and we want to get rid of this culture of corruption and cronyism, and we want to prop up the country, not any one political party, and use the government to enhance opportunity for people in the United States of America.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on a program back in Youngstown, Ohio in the Mahoney Valley, the old steel valley, called the Steel to Scholars Program. And this program was initiated by the president of our Chamber of Commerce, Tom Humphries. The intention of the program is to go into schools and school districts to set expectations and to highlight schools that are having success on the test scores that are mandated by the State of Ohio, and other test scores that schools take. And I want to take this opportunity, Madam Speaker, to thank Tom Humphries for taking the initiative in recognizing the importance of education in our community. There is a lot that needs to be done in the field of education at a State level and local level and definitely at the Federal level. But I believe that the most important thing that the Steel to Scholars program accomplishes is that it sets goals, and it rewards and highlights positive behavior and positive achievements. Madam Speaker, we recognize throughout society, whether it is in business or in education, that the level of success that any organization has or any school district has or any team has is directly related to the level of expectations that the community or the coaches provide and the bar that is there for the students to achieve. Regardless of what we talk about, as far as what needs to be done for education, whether it is through programs, or after-school programs, or exactly what needs to be done, there is nothing more important than telemarketing high levels of expectation, not in any particular school district, but in all school districts, and that is what the Steel to Scholars program is all about. The competition that we have in the United States of America and around the globe is more pronounced than it has ever been in the history of the United States of America. The competition is fierce. That is why tonight, Madam Speaker, we need to highlight the responsibility and the obligation of all of our citizens. Parents need to make it a personal mission to sit down and do homework with their kids; not some parents, all parents. Teachers and priests and pastors and the Chamber of Commerce and local elected officials all need to be there to raise that bar, to raise that level of expectation so that the kids, the students, will go out and try to achieve those levels. If we look at what has happened in the past few years, just in the past decade, the local labor pool that used to be the United States is now the globe, and high-tech, high-value workers, are rewarded with high salaries. I feel that the United States is not making the kind of investment that we need the make. Example: China, last year, graduated 600,000 engineers; India, last year, graduated 350,000 engineers; the United States, 70,000, and half of those graduates are foreign-born. In high-tech output, total research and development investment, U.S. patent applications, in all three of these areas the Chinese have grown and closed the gap on the United States and are projected to surpass the United States in the upcoming years. The U.S. has lost world share in high-tech exports. If we do not recognize that we need to make investments in research and development, make investments in education, but at the same time demand from local school districts, local teachers, parents, local elected officials, there is no one that cannot be involved in this project. It will lead to the success or the failure of the United States in the next couple of decades. Everyone has a role to play. Madam Speaker, I believe that the No Child Left Behind plan that passed this Congress needs to be fully funded. We need to make sure that those components of the No Child Left Behind program that allow for tutoring and math and reading that have shown great levels of success, those children who are tutored in math and reading through the No Child Left Behind program have increased their reading scores by 70 percent in some school districts, one teacher to six kids, but the funding needs to be there. So we have the parents, the local community, the local elected officials, and groups like the Chamber of Commerce, and people like Tom Humphries all coming together to support these kids so that we can have a better economy in the City of Youngstown and in the old steel valley.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, how about this for short-sightedness. We are going to cut the Centers for Disease Control. Everybody is talking about the avian flu. We do not know what to do. People are making requests of the administration. I am sorry, but government is the problem, unless somebody needs something. And I am sorry, but the Republican majority has had this House since 1994. They have had the Senate since 2000 or 2001, definitely since 2002, and on and off through the 1990s, and the White House since 2001. They cannot govern.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Basically what we are trying to say is that the Republican majority in the House and the Senate are not only spending American, hard-working taxpayer dollars to subsidize the most profitable industries in the country, the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the top agricultural, the megafarms. Not only are they doing that, welfare for corporations, and Democrats are for ending corporate welfare. Not only have they provided a welfare state for Iraq where we are not going to loan them the money and get the money back, welfare to corporations, welfare to Iraq, and then we are cutting the programs that just may lead to economic growth in the United States. We have to jump-start this economy, and we are not going to do it by cutting one of the great investments of high-speed rail. What a great program for United States of America. When I was in China, I went to Shanghai. They had a magnetic levitation train. It is the only one in the world. It goes almost 280 miles an hour. You are standing up and you are drinking your coffee. Why is that in Shanghai and not in the United States of America? Look at some of the cuts from the Republican Study Committee. Loans to graduate students, $840 million in cuts; eliminate the National Science Foundation math and science program grants.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I just want to make a point. The money that is getting cut, and we understand that reform needs to take place and our friends on the other side have not been willing to do it, but to cut $94 million in community health care and community health centers, that is preventative medicine. That investment is ultimately going to save our country money and save our health care system money because those people who will not have access to the community health care centers will end up in an emergency room a week or two later. Instead of going to the community health center with a cold, they are going to go to the emergency room in downtown Youngstown or East Hartford, Connecticut, or wherever they are living, and they are going to walk in with pneumonia; and it is going to cost the taxpayer more money. That is poor management. That is not smart. That is silly. No businessperson would make that investment.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield briefly, I just want to share a third-party validator that we have as we continue talking about welfare in the United States and what it is being spent on. This is by Cal Thomas, who writes a column. Cal Thomas, as most of you may know, is one of the conservative columnists in the country. In his column this week, he says, ``Seventy- two percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of recipients, the richest farmers, partnerships, corporations, estates and other entities.'' Cal Thomas, third-party validator says too much money going to the big farmers, and this is a big welfare State. What is Cal Thomas' advice to the 30-somethings and the House of Representatives? Cal Thomas says, ``Here's a suggestion: don't start with the poor. Start with the rich.'' Cal Thomas, one of the top conservatives in the country, is telling the Republican Congress, the Republican Senate and the Republican President, start cutting the welfare programs for the richest people in this country. We have been pinned into a corner in this country where the people down in New Orleans and those people who do not have and the middle class are somehow to be blamed for our huge deficits when 72 percent of ag money, ag subsidies are going to the top 10 percent of the farmers.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree with the gentleman 100 percent. The study that the gentleman just referenced, the Economic Policy Institute, the 30-Something Group is all about third-party validators. This is not the Meek or Ryan or Delahunt or Pallone Institute. This is the Economic Policy Group, a nonpartisan economic study group saying that the tax cuts were bogus. A couple of our friends on the other side said, well, the projected budget is going to be $100 billion or $80 billion less than what they thought it was going to be because the tax cuts are actually working. What they fail to tell you is that a loophole has been closed. It sunsetted out last year. So there was a tax put on a small business, people, that raised money to the tune of $80 billion. Do not come in and mislead the American people. It is not the tax cuts that are working. The tax cuts are not working. Go ask the workers at Delphi if the tax cuts are working. Go ask the workers whose wages have been stagnant the last 30 years if the tax cuts are working. They want to talk about we want to raise taxes. They are spending money on the country's credit card, as my good friend has said. Real quick, I just want to clean this up. The two bills I want our friends, other Members, to go see, go to Thomas.gov. H.R. 1 in the 108th Congress was the prescription drug bill which we were lied to about the original price, was supposed to be $400 billion. Then they came back months later and said it was $700 billion, no controls on the price. Go to the 108th Congress, H.R. 1. Then go in the 109th Congress, Thomas.gov, H.R. 3893, our energy bill. Our friends that are so concerned with reining in spending, the Republican House passed a bill that has given billions of dollars to the oil companies, and BP's profits today came out 34 percent higher this quarter. I mean, give us a break. The rhetoric is done. You try to dust off the rhetoric from the 1980s and put it in today's society, and it just does not work because it just does not make any sense. If you can hear and see and think, you know what they are saying on the other side is not making sense. What the Democratic proposal is is to balance the budget; is to implement PAYGO, which means if you spend money, you have got to pay for it, one way or the other. Our friends, the Republican majority, that started out with this big Republican revolution that I think has ended up in a Republican devolution, would not pass the PAYGO rules. We have a plan, you go to the House Committee on the Budget, to balance the budget. We retain middle-class tax cuts for working people. I am not afraid to stand up and say I am going to ask Bill Gates to pay a little more in taxes. I am not afraid to say it. I do not think that is a bold political move, but the wealthiest people are the only ones in this country who have not been asked to sacrifice in some way to pay for the two or three wars that we have going on and the greatest natural and national disaster this country has ever seen.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House again. Unfortunately, we are missing a couple of our standard-bearers who are usually here, our two Members from Florida, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), who are down dealing with the hurricane and the storm down in Florida. So we want to send out to them our thoughts and our prayers. We are thinking about them and their constituents and all the citizens of Florida at this time. And we are glad they are down there where they should be, with their constituents. I would also like to say hello briefly, Mr. Speaker, not only to those citizens of Florida but some friends of mine who are paying attention to what is happening here tonight and good friends of mine who are back in Ohio now, Bill and Molly Gales, who are watching us, paying attention, trying to understand some of the issues of the day, and I would like to give a shout out, Mr. Speaker. But let me say this, Mr. Speaker, we spent the last hour listening to, quite frankly, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of empty rhetoric. And normally the 30-something Group comes out and we talk about and criticize and critique the performance of the Republican majority. And I want the American people to understand this: the Democrats do not have any power in this Chamber. The Republican Party just spent the last hour blaming the Democrats. Like we had any lever of government to pull. The Republican Party controls the House by a large margin. They control the Senate. And the Republican Party controls the White House. They control every legislative and executive branch of government in the United States of America right now, Federal Government. So to look over here like we are the ones running these huge budget deficits is an absolute joke. I would like to say, my friends on the other side who were talking about saving money and controlling the deficits that are projected as far as the eye can see, $500 billion, I would like to say to our friends, Mr. Speaker, go to www.Thomas.gov and you can get the votes for two particular votes that I think the American people and Members of this Chamber would be interested in. Go check out H.R. 1, this is www.Thomas.gov, H.R. 1 in the 108th Congress. That is the prescription drug bill. That is a bill that spent 700-plus billion dollars on the Medicare prescription drug program and did absolutely nothing to control the costs of drugs by allowing for reimportation from Canada that would drive the costs down, or allow for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate with the drug companies on behalf of the Medicare recipients. Both of those provisions were Democratic provisions that went to drive down the costs of the prescription drug bill because we would be able to control the costs. Now, my friends on the other side who have spent the last hour being so critical, I find their names on the ``aye'' column. There were only 25 Republicans who voted against the prescription drug bill. So the Republicans passed a prescription drug bill full of pork that did not control costs. Before I yield to the gentleman, let me first give him a formal 30- something welcome. Do not let the gray hair fool you. This guy is 39\1/ 2\. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are going to have to implement the same rule that we had to implement when the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) came. The gentleman is going to have to pay dues twice to the 30-Something Group.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is another example of the extreme Republican majority in this House choosing their party over the country. They do not want to find out what the truth is, although that would be best for us to fix the problems that we had with Katrina and then be able to respond to the next problem that we may have, whether it is a terrorism attack or another natural disaster. We would then educate ourselves. But to not give the Democrats subpoena power to try to fix the problem because they hired all of their cronies in the top 8 or 10 positions in FEMA is, again, what is best for their party, not what necessarily is best for the country. And the Democrats are providing, time and time again in committee, on the floor, with amendments, with ideas, whether it is lend the money, whether it is reduce the cost for prescription drugs, whether it is strip the billions of dollars in subsidies that went to the oil companies, the Democrats have always provided an alternative, a change, to take the country in another direction. And that is what the Democrats are for. Let me real quickly give the e-mail address here: 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. I would like to thank our dual Member from Massachusetts and our Member and a half from New Jersey. With that, Mr. Speaker, I say this is not your father's 30-Something Group.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the decisions that we need to make have to be focused on what is best for the country, not what is best for one's political party; and I think that has really been the problem. It seems to me that every decision that is made down here by the Republican majority is what is best for the Republican Party, not what is best for the country. And it is time we start choosing the country over the party if we want to have some success. And just go through everything that has happened. Everything that has happened with the majority leader has been an attempt to secure power for the party and not do its best for the country. Let us look at the CIA leak and the corruption that is going on. To out a CIA agent because their husband disagreed with them on the war is choosing their party and protecting their party over what is best for the country. And to make cuts in programs that would invest in the American people and lead to economic growth instead of listening to Cal Thomas, who says cut for the richest people who are getting corporate welfare, they do that because they could then raise money for their party. And if the Republican majority keeps choosing their party over the country, then the country becomes weak; and a strong America starts right here at home.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And tuition is going to double in 5 years.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You are right.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. 40,000? Wow. H.R. 3764, you can come to www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina. We are trying to get a grassroots movement together, and it sounds like we are well on our way. 40,000 citizen cosponsors for this bill to form an independent commission so we can go back and review and actually fix problems. Would that not be novel, for government to go back and actually have an independent commission, remove the politics, and fix the problem? That is what the Democrats want. And all that you said there, I want to make one final point because we only have a couple minutes left. If you do not believe us and you do not believe our third party validators, Mr. Speaker, let us just use good common sense here. Every single cut that is being made to supposedly pay for Katrina is being cut in a program that does not have lobbyists. Can you believe that? Medicaid, after-school, free and reduced lunch, student loans, no lobby groups down here for those people. So we are going to pick on the little kids, we are going to pick on the people who cannot defend themselves. But meanwhile, the guys who are raising millions and millions of dollars for the Republican majority, we are not going to touch you. We could not possibly ask in this time of great national crisis, three wars, we have a natural disaster and high gas prices, we could not possibly go ask the wealthiest in this country to pay their fair share. And I say this, and I do not say this lightly. This administration does not have the guts, the guts, to go and ask the wealthiest people in this country to help out. It is easy to cut programs for poor people. It is easy, because you know why? None of those people associate with the poor Americans. They are not sitting on the White House lawn drinking champagne and eating caviar. But show the proper leadership and ask the hard questions and ask all Americans, including the ones making a billion dollars a year, to pay their fair share. Our Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina for our citizen cosponsorship, and you can e-mail us at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yeah.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt about it. I think there are so many issues we need to address as a Congress that are going either unaddressed or the actions of the Congress are hurting the average American people. That is why the Democratic Party is presenting proposals that will take us in a new direction. I think the country needs to go in a new direction. I do not need to go back to Ohio to figure that out. I think it is all over the country. We had a gentleman here last night from Oklahoma. We had a woman here from Florida. We had a man from New Jersey and a man from Ohio. From all over the country people are saying, Democrats, please take us in a new direction, in a direction that will change the country, and those are the kinds of proposals that we are offering. As we look back as to what has been happening here for the past 5 years, it has been nothing but appointing crony friends to positions that are key in executing the game plan for emergency management, and then the job not getting done, hiding information on the true cost of the Medicare bill so we have a corrupted system here. The Democrats want some transparency, and we want the opportunity to lead so we can take this country into another direction. I found it very interesting today in The Washington Post there was an article about a speech that Colin Powell's chief of staff for 16 years, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, gave. During the course of the speech, he talked a lot about what has been going on. This is one of the third-party validators that we like to have at the 30-something group. We like to validate our thoughts with someone who is independent of us. This is not the Meek Report or the Ryan Report. This is a 16-year chief of staff with Colin Powell, and he is a veteran. He was the director of the Marine Corps War College for quite some time. And what he had to say I found unbelievable. He talks about him seeing a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, by cutting out the bureaucracy that had to carry out the decisions: ``We have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, and generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina.'' If there is a nuclear terrorist attack or major pandemic, ``you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.'' This is a guy who has been in the Department of State for 16 years. This is a 16-year chief of staff, worked at the State Department, ran the Marine War College. This is a guy who has been around the block. He is saying if we have a terrorist attack of significant magnitude, we are going to see the ineptitude of our government. What the Democrats are saying with our independent commission that we want to oversee what happened with Hurricane Katrina, we had better figure out what the answers are here. We had better figure out what we did wrong because the next time it may not just be New Orleans, it may not just be the gulf coast and then people are going to come to us and say in 2005, where was the United States Congress? Where were they in their oversight duties? Article I, section 1 of the Constitution, the people of this country govern in the House of Representatives and we have oversight over everything, over every executive function, including FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. The concern is when a man of this magnitude who has been around the block as many times as he has been, who has watched up close the misinformation with the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, all this other stuff, says to us you will not even believe the ineptitude if there is a major nuclear attack in the United States, the ineptitude of the government. Now, our job is we should not have to wait. And that is why the Democrats want an independent Katrina commission just like we had an independent 9/11 Commission, bipartisan. And the committee that is set up right now might as well be chaired by Mr. Gillespie, the chair of the Republican National Committee, because it is a partisan committee. The Democrats do not have subpoena power, it is 11 to 9 Republican to Democrat. And I just feel that that is an unfair way to go about solving the problems, because it is about CYA, it is not about getting the facts. And that is a real problem. And meeting our constitutional obligation, we stand here and we raise our hand and we swear to uphold the Constitution so help us God. Part of that responsibility is the oversight that I think we have been derelict of our duty. And the Republican Congress has been derelict of their duty, and that is why the Democrats want to take this in a new direction and change what is going on down here and do that by having an independent commission that will get to the facts, not to the politics.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The last part of this article about the Colonel, he says what my colleague just said, what he was just saying: You and I and every other citizen like us is paying the consequence. Whether it was a response to Katrina that was less than adequate certainly, or the situation in Iraq which still goes unexplained, we are paying the consequences.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Before I give the e-mail address, the cuts at the Federal level, it goes down to the States. The State has to make a decision to raise taxes; and then it goes from the State, the State is pushing it down to the counties, as was said; and many of us represent districts, the local communities which are some of the poorest in the country. So those people are choosing between raising their own taxes that they do not have, the person who does not have $10 because of the energy costs and everything else, versus funding for their local school because No Child Left Behind is not paid for or hiring more cops because the COPS grant has been cut. And that is the end line.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I think that is a tremendous point. The Democrats are offering up amendment after amendment on the floor, in committees. We have an agenda that we are trying to move forward here, and our agenda is pro taxpayer, and it is pro taxpayer because we make investments, just like you do in your home with your family. The best investment you can make with your kids long term: Education. It is going to save you money in the long run. That is what the Democrats want to do. We want to invest into health care and pay up front so that we do not have to pay more in the long run. The Democrats are for preventative care with the community health centers, with clinics, so that people go to a clinic and get the antibiotics that they need or the basic care that they need, the preventive care that they need so they do not wander into an emergency room 2 weeks later with pneumonia and the taxpayer still has to pay for it. That is smart use of the taxpayer money. Investing in the student loans, I have said this a million times on this floor. We had a study in Ohio, University of Akron. For every dollar the State of Ohio invested into higher education, the State got $2 back in tax money. That is the investment the Democrats want to make. We are playing offense. We have an agenda here. We are not here just to criticize, although we could spend a lot of time making the proper criticisms. Providing health care for young kids. If you do not get these kids health care at a young age on the Medicaid program, SCHIP, the programs that we want to fund, these kids are going to develop long-term diseases, illnesses that will cost us a lot more money. And not only that, if you have kids in the classroom and only half the kids have health care, they are going to get the kids that do have health care sick.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that. I thank the gentleman. I thank the gentleman. The Republicans on the committee who have a majority of the folks on the committee shot all of those democratic amendments down. The Democrats offered to have a living wage. The Democrats offered to increase money for child care so that you can go out into the work force and contribute to the economy and pay taxes. Now, our friend from Oklahoma says, well, even the program where low-income people want to strike out on their own and they want to start their own business, that program is getting cut. What do you propose these people do? Is there an answer on that side? They are talking about this long and distinguished record of helping people. How? What do you mean? The poverty rate is going up, wages are stagnant, and it is harder to get into school, and tuition has doubled.