Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Nowhere to go.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, what has been great, really, is to watch that debate kind of evolve since early January since the President came to this Chamber and talked to the American people and basically said he had an idea for how to fix Social Security; stated that the Social Security program is in crisis, which we have refuted many times here in this Chamber through the 30-something Working Group. And it has been interesting to watch the evolution of the debate and the support for the President's proposal in January not only among many Americans, but among young people, and as the young citizens of the country became more and more educated on exactly what the President's plan would do through some of the groups that you mentioned, through Rock the Vote and a variety of other groups, became educated on, you know, basically what the President's proposal would be. And the issue that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis), other members of the 30-something Working Group here have focused on that we think is the most poignant argument to make is this issue right here, the national debt. The President's proposal would add $5 trillion to the national debt over the next 20 years. Now, as you can see here, and this is actually not updated, and we will have the new numbers next week. It is actually now $7.8 trillion this country is in debt that we owe; 7.8 trillion. The President's proposal over the next 20 years would add an additional $5 trillion to this number here and almost doubling the national debt. And if we keep going at the rate we are spending money here, we will double it in the next 20 years if we do not get our house in order. But this is the main issue, and I think young people, when they saw the President's proposal, when they saw that his proposal would add $5 trillion, increase their taxes, push the responsibility of paying the bills off on the next generation, I think that is when you began to see the rug come out from underneath the President's proposal. And so we have got to keep focused on the national debt and the annual deficits that are costing each taxpayer that is in the country, or each citizen in the country, almost $27,000.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is exactly what you were talking about just before I arrived here. This is the chart of the deficits over the past probably 40 some years, since the Johnson administration. We ran a pretty tight budget for a good many years. And into the Reagan administration you see a deep, deep dip, and into the Bush administration, and we were running $300 billion deficits every year. And then when President Clinton came in with a Democratic House, with a Democratic Senate, in 1993 passed a budget without one Republican vote. Al Gore came to the Senate to break the tie to vote for it. And it led to record surpluses in the United States of America. This is where we were in the late 1990s; and back with the current President, back into an era of deficits, of borrowing money from the Chinese, borrowing money from Asian countries, putting in jeopardy the future of many of the young people who live in this country today.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The gentleman is exactly right. And I think when you look at the number that we are going to spend in Iraq, probably by the end of this year it is going to be over $300 billion that we are going to spend in Iraq with absolutely no end in sight. No one has any idea of how much longer we are going to be there and what the cost in human life and U.S. treasure is going to be. Now, imagine, 435 Members in this Chamber, $300 billion. You are talking about $6- to $700 million per Member of Congress. Now, the American people need to ask themselves, would you have rather given that money to your congressional Representative in the House of Representatives to spend in your community on building schools, on building clinics, on making sure everyone has health care, or on this mess that we have in the Middle East? And I know people in Youngstown, Ohio, and Niles, Ohio, and Warren, Ohio, and Akron, Ohio, and Ravenna, Ohio, and Kent, Ohio, they would rather have the money spent in their districts. Because you are getting the same kind of calls that I am getting. No money for police and fire. No money for mental health levies. No money for their schools. And we have a boondoggle going on in the Middle East right now that no one even knows where the money is being spent. And money is being lost. U.S. taxpayer money is being lost. Now, you mention how we have bills that come to the floor to fund education, fund veterans and fund some programs that we believe in and we support and how underfunded they are, and how many thousands of kids. We had a study in Ohio that said No Child Left Behind was underfunded in the State of Ohio by over $1 billion.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, what happened, what we had done here is we have a chart that we broke down and basically puts in the perspective, what has been happening down here. As you can see, on the left, it is the red chart. It is the cost in trillions of dollars over the next 10 years to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent, of which a majority went to people who make over $500,000 a year, $1.8 trillion is what we are going to spend over the next 10 years. This is our priority. Tax cuts for rich people. The next is of that tax cuts for the top 1 percent, $800 million. Now, the top 1 percent in this country make a lot of money. So we are going to take $800 million from education and health and all these other programs, and we are going to give that $800 million back to the top 1 percent of the people in the country. Now look at this. This is the bar for how much we are going to spend over the next 10 years for veterans budget authority, $300 million. $300 million. Why would we choose permanent tax cuts for people who make over four, five, six, seven, $800,000 a year? Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, they are going to get the big tax cuts. Our friends at Enron, Tyco, all the big dogs are going to get a tremendous amount of money, and yet, we are shutting out veterans. We have thousands of veterans who are now in our hospitals in Bethesda and Walter Reed who are coming back single, double, triple amputees. This is a real problem, and I think this sends a message to the country that we just do not have the priorities that I think a lot of people in America have, and if you look at the polling, if you look at what the American people are saying, the approval rating, 33 percent for Congress, the President's approval rating is not much better. The ultimate question is, does Congress or does the President or the administration represent your values? Do you think they are fighting on behalf of what you want and what you need? The answer is becoming more and more apparent that this Congress is out of touch with the American people, that this President's agenda is out of touch with the American people. I think when you brought up priorities earlier, in a recent bill that was passed, big oil got a $2 billion subsidy. Can you imagine with the price of gas now and oil by the barrel going over $50, that we are going to take money from middle class Americans, take their tax dollars and give $2 billion of it for big oil companies to go explore and find more areas to get more oil? Is that not what they say, when the price increases, they need that money because it is expensive to go dig for oil, it is expensive to go drill? We are going to take taxpayer money to go do this, and I think that is a perfect example of how this Congress does not represent the values that many people in this country have. Would you not rather have $2 billion spent on your schools? We have got to compete with 1.3 billion Chinese workers, over 1 billion Indian workers over the next couple of decades. We need to be investing into our kids. We need to be investing into our schools, making sure our kids are healthy with programs in their communities, in their schools, that they can learn Chinese and they can learn a different foreign language of the countries they are going to be competing with. Why do the rich schools have two swimming pools and art programs? God bless them, we want schools to have them, but why do all schools not have a liberal education and liberal in the sense of speech and debate, art, visual arts, music, dance, all these things that provide for a well-rounded education? Those are the first programs that end up getting cut, and it is because, back here, we are cutting taxes for the top 1 percent and cutting benefits for veterans and the No Child Left Behind program and the health and welfare of our average citizens.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I was talking to a young person in my district a couple of days ago, and he is so talented on the organ. He is a great singer, and he is a great song writer, and I go to his church in Youngstown, Ohio, frequently. He is the head musician and head of the choir. And I talked to him, and he is going through a difficult situation. So I asked him, well, why not go to school? Why not sign up at Youngstown State and get a degree in music and teach music? You know what the initial thing he said was? I cannot afford it. I cannot afford it. There is no way I am going to be able to do it. Part of this that we talk about here is nuts and bolts. We need money for this program, and we are going to reduce or increase the Pell Grant scholarship by $1,000 per student. And I know if the Democrats were in charge, we would do that. But it is not just about reducing the debt, it is about communicating to that person. And there are millions of people just like this young man who are talented and skilled and want to do better, but do not think anybody is on their side. What we are trying to say is that if you put us in charge, if you give us a chance, we are going to be on your side. We are going to be your partner in this. We cannot do it for you. We cannot make this kid go to school. We cannot make him study. But there are millions of people out there who want to live a better life, and what the Democratic Party wants to do is help them do that; help them achieve their goals; help them move forward. Whether it is with education or health care or clinics or whatever it is, we are offering solutions here to create incentives for people to be able to go and experience their dreams and to move on. We are in the hopes and dreams business here. That is what the Democrats are all about. And we want to be in charge because we believe that we have a better program, better solutions than just saying everybody gets a tax cut, especially the top 1 percent, because that clearly has not worked. President Bush's dad called it voodoo economics. It has not worked yet. We are still waiting for what is going to happen here. Job creation is low and slow. People are taking up jobs that pay $10,000 less than the job they lost, without health care benefits. That is not progress.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is right. They raise them at the local level, and in many instances those people at that level vote ``no'' on the school board levy. Some States, like Ohio, it is elected. It just cannot be assessed. So in Ohio, the average person who lost their job and are making $10,000 less, and their kids' college tuition is up, and here comes the school board levy and they vote ``no,'' who is hurt then? We are all hurt then, because how are we going to compete with other countries who are focusing on educating their kids? How are we going to compete with an engineer in China who makes $5 an hour?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield once again, I might just comment that we should just look at the way it is set up. Everyone screams, let us have universal health care, and America needs universal health care. America has universal health care. Unfortunately, it is through the emergency room. It is the most expensive, inefficient way to run a health care system, because hospitals who run emergency rooms, especially in cities that have high concentrations of crime and people accessing health care through the emergency room, they get charitable funds. The taxpayer is still paying. So the question is are we going to pay for it up front and take care of someone when they have a cold, or are we going to wait until they go to the emergency room with pneumonia and it costs you 10 times more? What we are saying is restructure, reform the health care system and have the courage to take on the big donors with all the nice cufflinks and the Cadillacs; take them on and say, we are going to act on behalf of the American people, not on behalf of specific interest groups that are making a ton of money. Now, we cannot take on the pharmaceutical industry because they donate so much money to this body. So you either pick them, or you pick the people you represent back in your district. In the path of $400 billion, then $700 billion, then a $1 trillion prescription drug bill you do not do one thing about reimportation to help drive the cost down, or not do something as simple as giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down the cost of the drugs? Why not say to Pfizer and Merck, you want the contract for Medicare? Well, we are going to sit down and we are going to talk price. But no one had the courage to do that, because they get too much money from that industry. But there is a choice. And what we are saying is we are going to make a choice to represent the people of the country who need help, your grandparents, your parents who cannot afford prescription drugs, instead of the pharmaceutical companies. People elect us to come down here and do this. They want us to say, we do not want to bankrupt the pharmaceutical companies, we want you to keep doing your research and doing what you do, but you have to play fair. The bottom line is that a lot of the patents that the pharmaceutical companies get are researched out at the National Institutes of Health. They are publicly funded institutions. The taxpayers are paying for a good portion of this. Merck comes in and picks up a patent and only has to pay NIH .5 percent of their profits, and they go out and make billions of dollars at the expense of our grandparents, the 30- somethings' grandparents, or our parents. There is a certain unfairness there. And what we are saying and communicating with these charts, and what we are talking about is we want a chance to lead this Chamber. We have ideas, and we will implement them, and we will help partner with the American people to make their lives better and improve their lives and give them opportunities that they do not have or have not had in many, many years.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Let our kids pay for it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Going on 11.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we are not against deficits for the sake of being against deficits. Many would like to borrow and spend as much as they can, and that is what this Congress has been doing. But when you borrow, you have to pay the interest payments. Here is a very interesting statistic. Here is 2004, here is 2014, 10 years from now. The red is the interest on the debt that we pay every year, $7.8 trillion. That is the red. The light blue is education, the purple environment, and this last one here, a bluish-green is veterans. This red gets bigger because the interest payments that we have to pay every single year are getting huge. We do not like deficits because it diverts money from education, from the environment, from veterans, from health, Medicare, Medicaid, investments in which we will see a good return by having healthy, educated citizens who will create wealth and keep the system running. With deficits, that money is going down the toilet. A bigger and bigger portion of the budget goes to pay deficits. It is a waste of money. For this Chamber to be run by a group of fellows who said in 1994 that they wanted to pass a balanced budget amendment and make it a Constitutional amendment to have to balance the budget, to give us this, I think, begs the question why do we not turn the Chamber over to the other party. That is what we are asking for. The money we are borrowing is coming from outside of the United States. The turquoise here is domestically held debt, 2000 to 2004. The purple is debt held by foreigners. As we start to borrow more and more money, out in California it was not so much held by foreign interests, and as we move, we are borrowing more from the Chinese, Japanese, we are turning high deficits, high debt over to our children, and who do we owe? Asian countries we are competing directly against. Bad news, bad leadership, and we need a change. That is what this is all about here. Mr. Speaker, as we are starting to wind things down here, I just wanted to mention we had a tragedy in my district. On June 13, we lost a soldier in Iraq from Austintown, Ohio, Sergeant Larry Kuhns, Jr., who was 24 years old. He was 3 weeks from coming home. I wanted to take this opportunity to pass on condolences from this Congress to his family, to his wife, Courtney, their 23-month-old daughter, McKenzie, his mom, Kelly, and his mom's fiance, Jerry. We sometimes think we are important, but moments like this I think wake us all up and kind of allow us to recognize the gravity of some of the decisions we make. Whether it is sending kids off to war or putting the burden on them in the future, I wanted to mention Sergeant Kuhns and thank him and his family for his sacrifice to the country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the Bar Mitzvah of Charlie Dann, on June 4, 2005. Here is Charlie's speech entitled ``Memory is Powerful.'' There were many, especially some of my former Hebrew teachers, who would have doubted my commitment to Judaic and Hebrew studies. At times, to be honest, I've doubted myself. But I stand here today honored to join in a tradition that has meant something to so many in our world, our community and our family. And means so much to me. I am still not sure of exactly who I am in a large context, but I continue working on that with the help of so many. Thank you Rabbi Schonberger. And thank you Mrs. Kessler. And thank you Mr. Zevor and thank you Mr. Zaltsman and yes, thank you Mr. Grabiner and thank you Mrs. Schonberger. More thank you's later. Now I want to talk about why I decided to go ahead with a Bar Mitzvah. For those of you who know my parents, you probably realize that they did not force me to go through with this Bar Mitzvah. It was my choice. I chose to do this for many reasons. But many of them center around five men and five women. Four of the men aren't here in a physical sense. And two of the women aren't here either. So, now before I explain more, I'd like to ask my grandfather Bentley Lenhoff to stand. Next, I'd like my great-grandmother, Eva Dann to stand. Now my grandmothers, Hope Ellis, Michelle Dann, and Nancy Lenhoff and even though she denies it, I'd also like Barbie Hodros to stand as she too has been a grandmother to me. Thank you for everything that you've taught me and thank you for loving me and believing in me. Now I will explain more. The men that can't be here today--those that I knew and one that I never met--have given me an incredible legacy. Phil Arian, Stuart Dann, Julie Dann, Dean Cribbs and the men after whom I'm named, Charlie Lenhoff and Phil Oxman, valued tradition and doing the right things in life. None of them led a conventional life. But their lives have taught me the importance of being connected to a larger community and of making contributions to the family. And my great-grandmothers--Jessie Gorsline and Bess Lawrence Oxman--you were real pioneers in life. From you, I have been given drive and determination. I sometimes wish I had more of your scholarly dedication. But perhaps that will come in time. Like my grandfathers and great-grandfathers, you also valued community and being connected to larger goals that extended beyond your own universes. I stand up here today to pay tribute to my family, of course. And to Rabbi Schonberger who suffered through my occasional--OK frequent--obstinence and poor study habits. And I would be remiss not to thank my mom and dad, Alyssa Lenhoff and Marc Dann. And my aunts and uncles, Frank and Maddy Joseph, Ken and Marilyn Steinback, Kathy and Robert Leb, Scott and Priscilla Dann, Dan and Nan Arian, Mark and Ellen Arian and Lyndean and Myron Brick and my wonderful cousins--all of you--the little ones and the big ones--Big Emily, Meg, Robin, Amanda, Sylvie, Benji, Molly, Harte, little Emily, Mickey, Jillian, Jordan, and Jackson. And there are two others who I must mention--my sisters. Mavilya, Mia--who is studying somewhere in Italy or at least that's what she told her mom. Dr. Gulnara Tarpe who is a lot like a second mom to me as well. And of course my younger sister, Jessie--Pishur to me. I love you. But I also stand up her to talk about my thoughts about our community--the Mahoning Valley. I'm a politician's son. You didn't expect me to be brief, did you? I believe our community is at a crossroads and I further believe that we--as individuals--have the power to determine its future. As a graduate of Akiva Academy, it is painful for me to see the school suffer enrollment declines year after year after year. It is even more painful to drive to downtown Youngstown or over to Girard and see the remnants of what once was. It makes me sad to think of how we--as a community--have allowed our economy and our population to decline. Of course I realize that the steel mills can't come back. And I realize that there is no magic bullet for the economic development problems that plague our community. But I truly believe that some of our problems could be cured with a little bit of the ideas that are presented in today's Torah portion. Today's Torah portion talks about a census--counting people. Counting people involves more than just lining them up and ticking off numbers. Surveying the population of a town, a community, a state or a nation is something that is critically important as the Torah portion explains. But when you count them, it is important to realize the value inherent in every human being. We are more than numbers. I think this message is extremely important to us as a community and can help us better address the problems that we face. For too long, we have been intimidated by the declining census. We have allowed ourselves to believe that we are on a slippery slope down because our population has fallen. If we do what the Torah portion seems to advise and count people as more than just numbers, our census will swell to incredible proportions. We will see that among us are people of immense talent and incredible energy and great values. We will see that our census is among the best in the Nation. I am ready to join the community and to help so many of you who have been working so diligently to preserve what's left and to try to recapture what once was. I will join as a person of a lot of energy, a lot of creativity and a great deal of dedication to the values and morals that we as Jews have inherited from the prophets. I believe in honesty. I believe in hard work. I believe in compassion. I believe in solving and not creating problems. I am sure of all of this. But other questions still linger for me. What will I be? A politician? Perhaps. A football player? Doubtful. A journalist? Maybe. What I do know for certain is that--guided by my faith as a Jew--I will be a good person. I will be a person who knows right from wrong and who practices it. And, I will be a person who thinks and who cares and who draws on faith, memory and tradition in daily life. We can't forget who we are. We can't forget what we were. We can't lose sight of what we could be. Memory is powerful. And they say, past can be prologue. It is up to us to decide which past we choose.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for his leadership on the Armed Services Committee on the Democratic side, and his poignant remarks here this morning. Not only are we dealing with the situation, Mr. Speaker, in Iraq, we are also dealing with a major forgotten situation in Afghanistan. And as we began the war in Iraq, many, many, many months ago, we began to shift our focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. And we must remember that it was the Taliban who was harboring Osama bin Laden. And it was Osama bin Laden who funded and coordinated the attacks on September 11 on the World Trade Towers in New York, on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. So it is important for us to remember where this all started. And now, today, several years later, we have 19,000 troops in Afghanistan, and 140,000 troops in Iraq. We have forgotten and taken our eye off the ball. And one of the major concerns I have, Mr. Speaker, with the situation in Afghanistan is the issue of opium, the poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Two-and-a-half billion dollars, one-half of the GDP of Afghanistan is poppy, 70 percent of that sold in Europe as opium, funding through the black market, the terrorists cells not only in this country but all across the world. And it is very difficult for us to trace that underground economy. And I believe it was 5 or 6 months ago when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was before our Armed Services Committee. I asked him, what are we going to do about the drug production and the farming going on in Afghanistan, and about this year's crop, and what are we going to do? And General Myers said, ``Well, we have a little problem this year. The harvest came in early. The harvest came in early. So we missed it.'' Now, can you imagine, and it is the same as Mr. Skeleton has been saying, and many others in this chamber have been saying, we do not have enough troops in Afghanistan, and we did not have enough troops to get the job done in Iraq. That goes all of the way back to what was the planning, what was the end game, what was the exit strategy for both of these wars? It is like our foreign policy has attention deficit disorder. We start a war in Afghanistan, it is not finished. We have not eradicated the poppy cultivation, $2 and a half billion. And then all of a sudden, before the job is finished we go off and we start something else. And now we are in Iraq with no end in sight. And that goes back to basic planning, basic military philosophy. You need an exit strategy. You need a game plan. And we have not been able to do it in Iraq, and we have not been able to do it in Afghanistan. Just some statistics on what is going on in Afghanistan. 3 years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains the world's sixth least developed country, 173rd out of 179 ranked by the United Nations. Miserable health and education systems, based on UN calculations, three-quarters of adult Afghanis are illiterate. Fewer than one in five girls go to school in many of the provinces in Afghanistan, and half of the Afghanis are poor. The average life expectancy for an Afghani is 45 and a half years, 20 years less than any neighboring country. One Afghani woman dies in pregnancy every 30 minutes. We have been there for 3 years and we cannot set up basic health facilities so women could deliver a baby in safety? And it is because we have diverted our attention. Four were injured yesterday in a car bombing, 20 were killed on June 1. Human Rights Watch is calling for NATO to send in more security forces to Afghanistan, following a marked deterioration of the security situation throughout May. In the past month, Afghanistan has seen a series of political killings, violent protests, attacks on humanitarian workers, and bombings targeting foreign civilians and troops. Let us get it right. Let us focus on Afghanistan and make sure that the underground black market drug economy does not continue to fund terrorism.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman makes a great point. The whole idea of us representing the whole country is that these agreements are benefiting the very few people who are doing really well, and they are the same people who are qualified for the tax cut that goes to the top one percent. So there is a philosophical debate here: is the legislation and the trade deals that come out of this Chamber going to represent everyone, going to be good for everyone, or are they going to be good for the very few. That is the kind of philosophy. It has been divide and conquer down here for the last few years, and hey, if you get screwed out of your job, then so be it, that is where you are; my friends are doing good and they get to donate to my campaign, so we are just going to ignore you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we hear the word ``freedom'' come out of this Chamber a lot. Is that young girl free? She is trapped. She is an indentured servant just like there has been throughout the history of, many times in this country, and many others. She is not free. So we use freedom when it is convenient for us, but in the instance where it may hurt some corporation to reduce their profits, freedom does not mean anything.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we may have developed a new word or new phrase. We are advocating for value-centered trade, trade that represents our values and, hopefully, what we are trying to spread around the world, value-centered trade.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) would yield, we left Ann Arbor in Michigan.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for their leadership on this issue. For years and years you guys have been at the forefront of this issue, and now it is becoming a little more trendy, a little more popular, to be against some of these trade agreements. I would like to thank you as a new Member, second term. I am a lucky guy to have two Members in the Ohio delegation with such strong leadership on this issue. As we talked about the trade deficits, whether they are with one country or the overall trade deficit, I think it is important, and this is the real disconnect that I think the administration and many of the people who are supporting CAFTA are missing. The disconnect is with those people who are in our district, those people who lose manufacturing jobs, those people who lose textile jobs, whether in the Southern States, those are the people we are here to represent. If the trade agreements that we have been signing, whether it was NAFTA or PNTR or Most Favored Nation with China over years and years and years, if they are not working for everyone, then they are not good trade agreements for the United States of America. I am sure both of you represent counties that probably have the same kind of situations that the counties in my districts have. They cannot pass a sales tax; they cannot pass police and fire levies, library levies, school levies. I think two-thirds of the school levies that were on the ballot in Ohio last year failed, two-thirds. So years ago we were promised when we had the debate, we are going to pass NAFTA, but we are going to invest in education. We are going to trade with the Chinese, but we are going to make sure that our workers are the most skilled, educated and healthiest workers on the planet. We failed to do that on this end, and at the same time we sign agreements that do not have the labor standards, do not have the environmental standards to help lift these people up. As the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) pointed out earlier, with the average wage of a Nicaraguan worker, what are they going to buy here? What are they going to buy that comes out of the United States? Not a Jeep from Toledo, not a Cobalt from Lordstown, Ohio. They cannot afford it. It would take them 10, 15, 20 years to come up with the kind of money that they would need to just buy a car coming out of the United States of America. I think it is important, because it is not just about CAFTA. If we take a step back and we try to look at how the world is going to look in the next 10 or 20 years, we have high-tech jobs making their way to India and China, and we have a lot of our manufacturing going to China that has come from Mexico, first it went down to Mexico and then over to China, and everyone keeps talking about this new economy and what is it going to be. Well, we do not really know what it is going to be. Nobody seems to know what this new economy is going to be like. We are going to have the high-tech jobs, and our people are going to work, and it is going to be great. It will be like America is going to be one big country club. Everybody is white collar, everybody gets to golf and go to the swimming pool, and it is going to be great. That was the idea they were trying to pitch to us in the 1990s, and it did not work out that way. So it is important for us, I think, not only those of us against the trade agreements, but as Democrats, to say this train is so far down the track, we do not even know how much we are going to be able to stop it. I think it starts with CAFTA would be a good place for putting our stake in the ground and trying to go in another direction. But at the same time, we have got to invest in education, we have got to make sure we have healthy citizens. Eighty-five percent of the students that go to Youngstown city schools qualify for free and reduced lunch. That is probably the same, if not higher, in Cleveland and Toledo. Fifty or sixty percent of those kids live in poverty. So even if we just, for the sake of argument, say these trade agreements are great, let us all compete; let us educate our kids; let us do what we have to do to compete with them, free markets, which we do not always buy, but let us for the sake of argument say that. How are we going to have the kids in Youngstown able to compete against these workers in the other countries if we are not investing in education and not making sure they are healthy, lifted out of poverty and on the playing field? I will say this before I yield back: We are going on the global field of competition with less than half a team because these kids are not getting the kind of education, the kind of health care that they need. So here we are trying to compete with the Chinese, now we want to do it with some other countries, and we just are not making the proper investments to even come to the point where we are going to be able to lift all of our citizens up to compete with over a billion Indians and 1.3 billion Chinese. And until we do that, fix these trade agreements and make those investments, we are going to see these trade deficits continue, we are going to see other countries like the Chinese and the Indians outpace us with engineers, computer scientists, and all of these other high-tech workers and, eventually, every community is going to be like some of the communities we represent, struggling to fund their schools, struggling to fund basic police and fire, libraries, the basic services that government needs to provide. So I am happy to join my colleagues here tonight, and I thank the gentleman again for his leadership, and I yield back.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I remember last year as well, we did the same thing for veterans benefits. It was an increase of, I do not remember how many billions of dollars, but it basically made it full funding. But it had to reduce in kind dollar for dollar what would be needed for the veterans from the tax cut that went to the top 1 percent. Voted right down, party line.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Another part of the Democratic platform, one that we will be issuing in the next few months, is financial literacy. Combat this at a young age, combat this. These kids are in grade school and high school and teach them about the stock market and compounding interest and all of the different aspects to managing money and being debt free, if you save now, and what it turns into 30 years from now. That is another part of the Democratic proposal. We need to teach these kids how not to get in this position here. We need to teach many leaders in the Congress here how not to get ourselves in this position here as well.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We have freedom french fries down in the House diner. We do not have French fries, we have freedom fries. Freedom. Is this freedom? Is owing $29,000 when you get out of college freedom? Is owing the government $27,000 freedom? Is that freedom? That is not freedom. So we cannot really just apply freedom to little areas that are convenient. And freedom is economics too, and I believe that we are beginning to get into a situation by letting the credit cards run rampant through this Chamber, letting the spending get out of control in this Chamber, and it takes away the freedom for our young men and women.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman is absolutely right. When we check and verify our own statistics here that we are using, again, the poll that we had mentioned talking about really what the main issues facing the people of the country are, a strong majority of self-described political Independents, and this is the ABC News Washington Post poll, 68 percent of self-described Independents say they disagree with the President's priorities. Sixty-eight percent. The hard-core numbers on Social Security and the President's priorities are 30, 35, maybe 40 percent in the grand scheme of things. So we are talking about 60 percent of the country not agreeing with the priorities of the President. As we talk about what the crises are in the country, one thing that I think ties into what we are talking about, the national debt, the annual deficits, the $26,349 that each citizen owes to that debt, the $500 billion annual deficit that we are running, plus, it kind of feeds into a notion in the whole country about debt. So what the 30-something Group wants to talk about a little bit tonight is the issue of young Americans dealing with debt. Because we are really, by the decisions we are making, putting a $26,000 bounty on the heads of young people, tax bounty on the heads of young people, the minute they are born; and they owe the government that much. Then we begin to look at, project that $26,000 out for another 22 years from the day they were born, and then we begin to deal with young Americans in college. And this was a very interesting statistic that we were able to find in an article last week. According to a survey released by Sallie Mae, the Nation's largest provider of student loans, college seniors expected to graduate this year, probably right around now, with $28,953 in debt; basically $29,000; $26,000 of it is going to be student loans, and another $2,800 of it is going to be credit card debt. So if you are graduating from college today, you owe the 26 grand already from the debt that we need to pay off, which each citizen owes, and then they owe another $28,000, $29,000 basically in student loans and credit card debt. And that feeds into a real problem that we have in this country. It is a disincentive to go to school, it is a disincentive for college, and really it traps a young man or a young woman coming out of college with a good education, and all this debt. That is not freedom. And we hear freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom in this Chamber time and time and time again.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Ready. Let us do it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And patriotic. Quite frankly, tell the wealthiest people in the country, we would love to give you a tax cut. Who would not? Who in politics would not like to tell a really rich person I want to give you a tax cut? I mean, that would be great. But you have to do the right thing, and you have to say, you have to meet your responsibility to society. We cannot afford to give you a tax cut right now, because we have a $7.79 trillion debt. Now you can be selfish and still want one. Why not give the middle-class guy the tax cut, who has all of this debt burden, who is trying to send their kids to school? We cannot afford to give Warren Buffet a tax cut. I am sorry, Warren.