Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, they can go to the website at www.housedemocrats.gov/Katrina or they can e-mail us. We will put them on either way. But I think it is important we also need to get ahold of the people who represent folks at home, who come down to Washington, D.C. for 3 and 4 days during the course of a week, and let those folks know that this is something they are interested in because it speaks to more than just this legislation. It speaks to the independence that we think needs to oversee this process. It also speaks to the kind of change that we need in government. We need this kind of independence. We cannot have people holding us back to make the proper decisions in government, and that is happening way too much down here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. See, he graduates out of the 30-somethings next year. I am going to be a one-man show.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You are welcome here every time we are here, my friend.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) has been resilient in pushing us to get up to the floor once or twice a week. I just saw a poll last week that had 60 percent of the independent voters in the country are sick and tired of what has been going on in Washington, D.C. Mr. Wagner from General Motors said D.C. better do something about health care. We are not doing anything. What we are doing seems like we are doing something, but the energy bill is not really doing anything. The gentleman mentioned the $1.5 billion a week that we are spending in Iraq. I want to share one thing. This is a great article today in the Washington Post. The first line says it feels like the 1990s minus the good parts, all of the scandals that were going on, but the economy, energy costs and everything is bad. There was a proposal made, and talking about dealing with the Chinese, we need to offer, and that is what we are doing as Democrats, we just need to convince the American people that we are offering alternatives and do have ideas, whether it is prescription drugs or alternative energy. I want to share a proposal from the National Academies and it is a combination of a variety of different things to get our math scores up. Our math scores in 8th grade, we ranked 15th internationally and in the 9th grade we ranked 24th internationally. We are not going to stimulate the economy if we do not have engineers and math and science majors, and the 30-Something Group is calling for a million new engineers and scientists over the next 10 years because we believe that is going to be the greatest stimulus. But let me share the proposal from the National Academies to spend money on math prizes for high schoolers, pay raises for math teachers and to boost Federal research funding by 10 percent annually for 7 years. That would cost $10 billion a year. That is it. We are spending $1.5 billion a week in Iraq. The American people judge, $10 billion a year on increased Federal funding for research and development and targeted investments to increase math and science scores in the United States of America among K-12 school kids. That is what the Democrats want to do, versus $1.5 billion a week in Iraq, versus hundreds of thousands and millions and trillions of dollars over the next 10 years in tax cuts for people who make more than $600,000 a year. Pick what they want. Democrats, increased funding for Pell grants to lower tuition costs. Republicans, cut taxes for the top 1 percent. Trillions. Democrats, fully fund No Child Left Behind, make sure every kid who is eligible for more funding, for afterschool tutoring, summer school, before school; Democrats are for full funding of that. Republicans, no. We have to give our tax cuts to our buddies. And that is the difference. Time and time again and over the course of the next year, we are just going to hammer the differences between the two parties.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Let me do this, we want to give the e-mail address, 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Exactly. So they are picking their own personal political situation over what is best for the American people. Can you think of a better reason to take someone out of their leadership position? We all play politics here. We are just here. You get 435 people in a room, there is going to be politics. We understand that, but when you consistently and constantly pick your own personal political interests over the public interests, even if it means not getting to the bottom line, not getting to the kind of reforms that are going to be needed, then that is a real problem, I think, and I think the American people from the polls and from the people we talk to in our district seem to feel the same way.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to highlight that fact. This totally puts into perspective what happens down here under their leadership. We have a prescription drug bill that we spent $700-some billion over the next 10 years on, but we were told it was $400 billion. So that is another issue, to start a prescription drug Medicare program, and we are not doing anything to control the costs, whether it is reimportation from Canada or to allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to buy in bulk. There would be every Medicare beneficiary behind that proposal. And you can say Merck, you want to negotiate this, we want 30 to 40 percent chopped off, and they would do it because they want the contract. We would not have to create a new bureaucracy. If people think the old Democrat Party wants to create a new bureaucracy, they are wrong. This is a progressive idea of giving the Administrator already in place the power. It is a progressive idea that makes sense, but you can only do it if you are not tied to the pharmaceutical lobby like our friends on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes. So this is a lot of pressure. You think being a Member of Congress is a lot of pressure, try being the godfather to the first new baby in the family. So that for me has kind of changed my perspective, and it makes all of the stuff we talk about here that much more important because you begin to see the timetable, the effect our decisions have over the long term. I know a couple weeks ago when we left, we were talking about this administration, this Congress putting people in charge of key positions, in charge of key processes that need to happen here, whether it was in FEMA, Medicare, or regardless of what it is. There has been, over the past 5 to 10 years in this body and now in the executive branch, a host of cronyistic appointments to key positions. There have been people put in key positions, like FEMA, that have absolutely no experience whatsoever. All we are saying in this Chamber from the Democratic side is give us a chance to run this place. Give us an opportunity to be able to handle the levers of government and allow us to lead. That is the opportunity that we are asking the American people for, my good friends, because our colleagues who have had the levers of government over the past, since 1994 in the House and since 2000 in the White House and in the Senate, have not been able to govern. They just have not been able to do it. You do not have to look very far. Ask yourself sitting at home, what is going on here? I mean, we have higher energy costs, we have more people in poverty, we have tuition costs that have doubled, we have our FEMA administration that has been devastated financially. We have put cronies in key governmental positions. We are leaking information about CIA agents. I mean, what good is going on right now? Somebody please help me. We are bogged down in a war that is costing us $1.5 billion a week. I repeat, $1.5 billion a week. We are getting our clock cleaned by China. Delphi, the largest auto supplier in the country, filed for bankruptcy. They are asking their workers to take 60 percent pay cuts. I have over 5,000 workers in my district, in Warren, Ohio. What positive is happening today due to the Republican leadership in the House, Republican leadership in the Senate, and the Republican leadership in the White House? I cannot seem to find anything. I think this country deserves a lot better, and I think we need to start talking about that, my good friends. This country deserves better. After September 11, this President had more political capital than any President probably since FDR after Pearl Harbor, and he asked the American people to go shopping. That is the best leadership you can come up with in the United States of America? We deserve a little better than that, I think. He did not start an alternative energy policy, not to fix the health care system that is a mess, not to take care of the millions and millions of young kids that live in poverty, not fund No Child Left Behind. What are we doing? The biggest leadership move is to ask the country to go shopping? What is that? That is terrible. That is terrible leadership. We have given this President the opportunity time and time and time again to lead, and he has not done it. He has not done it. And now the whole Delphi situation, which I am a little too intimate with because of the workers in my district. And General Motors. I have a General Motors plant in my district. Believe me, I understand why the corporations are doing what they are doing. The rising costs of health care are crippling the American businessperson. Crippling the corporation and the small businessperson. So now they are trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip in the form of asking middle-class citizens in the United States of America to get less health care or to pay for more health care, whether they are in a union or not in a union, instead of addressing the key issue, which is that the insurance lobby and the health care lobby and the pharmaceutical lobby which has a stranglehold around the United States Congress. Let us be honest. How about a little straight talk from the House floor tonight? Check it out. When you are passing the Medicare prescription drug bill, there are four lobbyists for every one Member of Congress; and I know I did not have a lobbyist, I did not have one, let alone four, so somebody had eight. Now, imagine that. When we get this health care issue under control, that will release a lot of potential that can get freed up, investments that could be made back in the United States of America. For example, and I am sorry because we have been dealing with this for the last week, with the Delphi situation, this money that this corporation saves, and we all want to save Delphi. We want it to be a solvent company and we want them to maintain the work that they have in Ohio. Of course we do. The way the system is set up is any savings that they get, they are going to invest that money into China. That is what they are going to do. So the whole system is screwed up to where you are forcing corporations to invest into these other countries. Here we have an opportunity with this independent commission to oversee a problem with the government through FEMA, the problems that FEMA had, to oversee it in an independent manner like the 9/11 Commission, and the Republican leadership put the kibosh on it. They put together a bust-out committee that is 11 Republicans, 9 Democrats, that is going to totally, totally, whitewash this thing. Get out the Brillo pads because they do not want the truth to come out. The Democrats will not have any subpoena power. Get a Republican Governor, a Democratic former Member of Congress, put together an independent commission and let us try to fix this problem. Let us try to fix this in a way that we are putting partisanship aside. Mr. Speaker, next we will hear from the newest member of the 30- Somethings, and we charge him two sets of dues because he is almost 30- Something twice.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And the godfather. I am also going to be the godfather.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, see, I took a week and I watched. I was very timid. I did not want to make any mistakes, so I watched for a while. I watched my brother. I was being a little hesitant with the bottle, and my brother is like, jam it in there, you are not going to hurt the kid. So you pick up and gain a little confidence, and then I burped the kid. It was great. Bingo.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome our newest 30- something member joining us from New Jersey this evening; but before I get into it, I want to make an announcement. Since we left here last week, we had last week off, and since we left here, there has been an addition to the Ryan family. My brother had a baby last Friday night on his birthday. Nicholas John Ryan. So I want to welcome him into the world officially, and say hello to his first two friends, Zack and Molly Leonard, who were all over to the house the other day, and I fed the baby for the first time the other day. So here I had the bottle, and I fed him. It was great.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, that is because the gentleman is almost his age. Tell the American people how old you are.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, we are going to do our best. If you are not watching baseball tonight and you were watching the 30-something Dems, our e-mail is the 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. We have been getting a ton of e-mails lately, so do not be afraid to drop us an e-mail. We appreciate everybody who is listening and watching, and I appreciate my colleague fighting through a cold to be down here with us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I hope you feel better. My colleague from Florida was down last week, sick as a dog.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to just go back, and I think this week, whenever we get our next hour to come this week, I think that is a great idea, to talk about that. As you were going through the poor and the middle class that is getting squeezed harder and harder, you made a great point that it is our job as Members of Congress to advocate on behalf of those people. I think that has a moral component to it. I want to set that moral component aside. I want to talk for 2 minutes, because we are wrapping up here, about economics. We talked about who is investing in the United States. Not many people. We are talking about even the government now is cutting programs that would invest in these young people and these poor middle- class people that we need economically, like the 30-somethings are calling for a million new scientists and engineers over the next decade in the United States of America to generate our economy again. That is what we are saying. That is investment into human capital here in the United States. We need these poor people to turn into with health care, education, and we are going to talk a little this week or next week about the arts programs that we believe if started at an early age, afterschool programs, will increase math and science scores. And we are going to bring some third-party validators and some studies that have been done to back up that argument and why the arts are a good component of feeding into this math and science goal that we have. We have to recognize that investments into Medicaid, with reform, and we need to reform the system too, do not get me wrong; but investments in Medicaid, and investments in Head Start, and investments in the No Child Left Behind, and investments in the Pell grants are going to lead to more wealth in the United States of America. We are going on the field right now with half of our society not eligible to play in the game. All these poor kids that we saw down in New Orleans, it is the same in Miami, it is the same in Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Toledo, Cincinnati, and Columbus. There are core pockets of very, very poor people in our country. And all we are saying is, invest in those people so that they can go out and create wealth for the United States of America. The Ohio State football team would not go on the field with five players. It does not make sense. You need to have everybody on your team. And quite frankly, our country is only 300 million. We are competing against over a billion Chinese citizens and over a billion Indian citizens. If you are going to compete with them, you better have every single player on the field prepared, conditioned, and ready to move forward. So when we talk about Medicaid, Head Start, No Child Left Behind, and Pell grants, we want reform on these systems because we want to make them better and convert them into the 21st century, but we have to make the proper investments into our people. That is the bottom line. There is the moral component that we talk about, hopefully not just on Sundays, but there is also this economic component too that I think is going to help stimulate the economy in the 21st century if we make those investments. But today we are not making them. So we cannot expect something to happen when we are not doing anything. It just does not make any sense. I will let my colleague make a final comment or two and then we will wrap it up and give out the e-mail address.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Where is the outrage? Where is the outrage? They are outraged about Harriet Miers? Wait a minute, here is a woman who has a distinguished legal career. And I do not want to give the whole Supreme Court thing here, because that happens on the other side of the Capitol, but here is a distinguished lawyer. Now, I am not so convinced that she may be the best Supreme Court Justice pick, but, my goodness, to be outraged at that? How about being outraged at both? How about that? Be outraged at both. Be outraged about Harriet Miers, and be outraged about this too. My goodness.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Let us put all this together here because as I am listening here; I am beginning to see how this is coming together. Let us see if we can outline this here. If you are poor or working poor, which is the dark underbelly of the United States of America, the working poor that do not qualify for Medicaid so they do not have health care but they are working a couple of jobs and they are trying to make ends meet. So if you are in that class, this outfit, the Republican outfit that we have in right now wants to cut Medicaid, is not funding No Child Left Behind, they are cutting Head Start and we have a health care system that is a wreck. Watching health care in America is like watching a train wreck happen. It is terrible. So if you are poor or working poor, those programs are getting cut, school lunches, all the other good stuff. And you probably live in a community where you are having criminal justice issues like we are having in a lot of our communities where you cannot afford the prison, the jail. You do not have enough sheriffs, deputies to run the jail. You do not have enough police on the beat. And if you do, you put them in the court system and they wait and wait and they get back on the street. A whole other set of the issues. If you are in the middle class, the Republican majority has done nothing for Pell grants to try to reduce the cost of college tuition when tuition has doubled in just about every State in the Union in the past 5 years. If you are in the middle class trying to provide health care, if you are a union worker in Delphi or some other UAW or something else, you are getting squeezed. If you are part of the 45 million or 50 million now that do not have health care, you are getting squeezed. If you are a middle-class small businessperson, you are getting squeezed. We get calls every day in my office about small businessmen and women who cannot afford to provide health care for their workers. Squeezed. If you are in the upper middle class and you are trying to provide health care, it is not working. These systems that we have in place are broken; and instead of fixing them, instead of reforming the system or the systems, our ideas are so antiquated, old school, supply-side economics in a world where that does not work. Look around. I mean, look around. This does not work. It is crazy. What are we doing here? We have a reform agenda that invests in education, invests in research and development, helps kids with math and science, fully funds No Child Left Behind, puts money into the Pell grants so your kids can go to college and afford it, reforms the health care system to move the investment on the preventative side instead of on the tail end when people are so sick and acutely ill that it costs so much more money. The reforms that we want to make on the preventative side provide for mental health coverage so people do not go out and commit crimes who are mentally ill because they have medication or they have some basic counseling which saves us money. We are cheating the taxpayer right now. They want to tell us we were tax and spend. They are borrow and spend. And they are not even spending it right. They are spending at a billion and a half a week in Iraq. They are giving it to billionaires. That is not good government. That stinks. That is not right. It is just not right because average people are suffering. Let me say this, we do not come to this floor for what this week will probably be 3 or 4 hours. All day we are here and we get an opportunity to come at night. We are not doing this for therapy. We are not doing this because we like to come down here and listen to each other talk. If we wanted to do that, we would go out and grab a hamburger and a Starbuck's and go talk and drink some green tea. We are here because the country is unraveling before our very eyes, and the Republican leadership is either doing nothing or doing something to make it worse. The Democrats have an agenda on health care, education. We are ready to reform. We are ready to take over. We just need the chance. And I know from people in my district and from the gentleman's district and from the district of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), people are suffering; and the government is part of the problem now. Maybe Ronald Reagan was right, government is the problem. Right now it is. But I think government can be a positive, progressive leading force in society with the proper leadership. And right now it is just not happening. But we are not doing this stuff for therapy. We could be going out and having dinners and everything else. We have come here because this country needs reform; and if no one else is going to talk about it, then the 30-something group is going to step up and implement an agenda and talk about the agenda that is going to make this country better.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Can I ask a question? Where is the Christian Coalition? Where is the Christian Coalition when you are cutting poverty programs? Where are you? You know, they are fighting over Supreme Court justices and meanwhile poverty programs are being cut for poor people. Now I do not know. 12 years of Catholic school, and I know you had a religious upbringing as well. Where is the Christian voice in all of this? All of a sudden silence. Medicare, Head Start, No Child Left Behind, which would help more in high poverty schools than any other. Where is the Christian right? Silence. Silence. Because they are getting overrun by the corporate greed and the corruption and the cronyism that is going on here. That is the problem. Right under their nose. Join us. You talked about Medicaid. You talked about poverty. You talked about Head Start. You talked about helping people that cannot help themselves. I cannot think of anything more Christian. I do not want to get religious, because this is a public forum. But it has been invoked time and time again from the other side. We hear it every day.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They are open. They are open.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, the ultimate question is, and that is why we need to issue a reform agenda for the country, because it just seems like nothing is really working right now the way the system is currently set up, and there are a lot of arguments against it, but it is based on a world that really no longer exists. The idea of comparative advantage, the great free trade concept of comparative advantage is from the 1800s. I mean, trying to apply it to a society today that is so much different than it was a few hundred years ago. So our reform agenda that the Democrats are promoting is to reform the way government works. Whether it is the way workers here who have created a lot of wealth and their wealth is then invested into China, to steal their own jobs and wages and benefits and everything else, or to argue literally for a supply-side economic theory where you cut taxes for the top 1 percent, and, the theory goes, they invest in the United States and that creates wealth here. Well, who in their right mind thinks a millionaire who gets a couple hundred thousand dollars back is investing in the United States? They are investing the money in China or they are going to invest it in mutual funds in different investment schemes in China. They are not investing it in the United States. If people were investing in the United States, companies like Delphi would not be going bankrupt. And that is the bottom line. The question for America is, Who is investing in the United States today? We have cut taxes; we have a huge budget deficit, so the government does not have any money to make any progressive investments like magnetic levitation trains or education or scientists and engineers, or research and development. And then you cut taxes for the top 1 percent, and they take that money and they invest it in China. Who is investing in the United States? That is the ultimate question. I think that the government has a responsibility. It cannot do it all, but we need to certainly create an environment in which it is okay to do business and it is worthwhile for people to make the proper investments, and that brings up why we need to reform the health care system. I was just talking to a gentleman who runs a hospital in Youngstown, Ohio. The one hospital left in Youngstown, with a population of about between 80,000 and 90,000, almost 90,000, they do about $50 million a year in charity care. $50 million. These are people who walk into the emergency room because they have nowhere to go. Do you know how much money we are wasting by waiting until they come into the emergency room? That makes no business sense at all. You cannot be a businessperson and analyze our health care system and think in any way, shape, or form it makes any sense. Would it not be smarter to maybe give them access to a clinic to where they could take some preventive measures, get their antibiotics, take care of a cold instead of pneumonia. Pregnancies, as far as pregnancies go, have the prenatal care, whatever it takes, expand SCHIPS, do these things that will take care of the preventive side, instead of emergency room care. The taxpayer is paying either way. The current system is cheating the taxpayer. It is no good.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely, they are going to lose their homes.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be back and continue our discussion here. I hope for the next hour, my good friend, we can talk about something that I think is very important for the Democratic Party and what the future of the Democratic Party is all about, and that is reforming government. We are the party of reform. We have offered alternatives, as we have talked about in the past hour and over the past several weeks, that have been ignored; but we are not going to let that stop us. We are going to continue to talk throughout the rest of this year and into next year about the different reform measures that we are going to propose, and we are going to be critical of what we think is a broken system in general and broken systems in general, all of these different systems in our government. I was thinking about this and talking about this last night, about how our government runs today; and our government really runs today totally designed like an industrial-age system. It is almost like an assembly line. We have our health care over here and our education is over here and our foreign policy is over here and our research is over here, and none of the component parts are allowed to ever come together. That is an old assembly line kind of system. You deal with this part and you put that part on and then that part, and everything is separated. Government in the 21st century needs to be integrated and unified. A health care system that does not teach healthy eating habits and has a diverse physical education requirement in our schools or gives our kids good food in our schools, that is not a comprehensive health care system. Because at some point we are going to pay the bill for obesity or diabetes, or whatever may come from the long-term effects of not having a healthy diet. And one day, somebody is going to be on Medicare, and we are going to have to pay the price. I want to just talk for a couple of minutes about what is going on with Delphi and their bankruptcy and how I think the system right now is a bit broken. Basically, over the last 30 years or so, this company and their workers have generated a lot of wealth over the past 30 years. A lot of people in Ohio and in Mississippi and all over the country have made money. Workers were paid well, and they had pensions and benefits and health care coverage and everything else. The wealth that these workers created was taken and invested in China, first in Mexico, then in China. And now, because of all of that that has happened, we increased the global supply of labor, that is driving down the wages here in the United States of America, which leads to Delphi filing bankruptcy because they cannot compete with their competitors who are doing a lot of business in China. It just is something broken when a worker or a group of workers who create wealth and that money is taken and invested somewhere else comes back to bite you on the behind. And now their company is filing for bankruptcy. The workers are going to be asked to take, they are asking them now to take about a 60 percent pay cut. Now, there is not a person in the world, there is not a person in the United States for sure who could take a 60 percent pay cut in the course of a few months and not file bankruptcy. How do you do that? I do not care if you are making $40,000 or $200,000 a year. If you are asked to take a 60 percent pay cut, you are going to have to file bankruptcy. So the squeeze is on the workers here in the United States. Many people may say, well, those workers are making $27 an hour, that is a lot of money; and that is a whole other argument. But the bottom line is, there is going to be in my community $150 million pulled out of our local economy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They are not pharmaceutical lobbyists.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And the poverty numbers are up so there are going to be more people applying for this or qualify for this program.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Bingo.