Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back. Memorial Day is one of the special days. Memorial Day, the 4th of July, Veterans' Day, those are some of the great moments to be a Member of Congress, because you get to go to all the different parades and all the different events and meet some of the great heroes from communities in Florida and Ohio, those people who were just from average homes, average families, and just went and did their duty. I think it is good that several times a year we remind ourselves. One of the things that I think that generation of soldiers from World War II gave us was a real spirit of what it is like and what it means to be an American. It was great over the past week to have these experiences, because I think in many ways we are losing that, that sense of community, that sense of we are all in this together. During the war, and I am sure the gentleman has heard stories, as I have, of the kind of sacrifices that each community made, each family made. Some would send soldiers off to fight, some would send soldiers off to be a part of support units, some would serve here at home. But then the women and the mothers had their own roles to play back here at home. Whether it was going to the factory or working in the house or working on the farm or wherever it was, everyone in the country made that sacrifice to have the kind of success we had. I think if there is one governmental program that is indicative of that spirit, it is the Social Security program. We have been focusing on this for many, many months now, really since the beginning of this Congress, and just trying to hammer away at this issue and trying to get our arms around it. I think we have come to grips with the fact that this program is not in a crisis state. It is the greatest program that this country runs. It runs at a 1 percent administrative cost. Ninety-nine percent of the money that goes into the system gets back out into the pockets of beneficiaries. Only 1 percent is administrative costs. Even those folks out there that may say government does not run efficiently, and I would agree that there are cases throughout government where programs do not run as efficiently as they should, would say this is efficient. I think part of what we need to talk about from the Democratic side is about reforming government, about making it run efficiently, about how it should run in an age based on information, with technology and knowledge and communication abilities that we have today. How do we make this government run more efficiently? There is no question that we need to address that problem. Social Security is not one of those programs. Ninety-nine percent of what goes in comes back out and goes to the beneficiary. One of the kind of myths that we are trying to fight here with our 30-something Working Group is that this program is not in a crisis state. We kind of just want to start the debate from there. We are kind of reacquainting ourselves with this. Here is a chart for the folks at home to look at. It starts in 2005 and continues to 2070. It basically in the navy blue here, from 2005 to about 2047, 2048, if we do not do anything with Social Security at all, we will still be able to pay 100 percent of the benefits, 100 percent of the benefits. If we do not touch this program, if we do not implement anybody's reform package, we will still be okay until 2047. Then even after that, to the late 2040s, until 2075 where the light blue is, we are still able to pay 80 percent of the benefits that beneficiaries should be receiving. If we do not touch it, we are 100 percent until 2047 and then still good until 2075. For the people at home, you make the judgment. Is that a crisis? Is this program being solvent until 2047, 2048, a crisis? That is the real question.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. In 1993, a Democratic House, Democratic Senate and Democratic President passed a bill that balanced the budget; and we began to pay down the debt in the country because we were running at the surplus level.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, as the gentleman is saying that, this survey that the gentleman was just talking about, the Washington Post-ABC News poll said that 58 percent of those interviewed said that the President is concentrating mainly in his second term on problems and partisan squabbles that these respondents said were unimportant to them. Four in ten, 41 percent, said the President was focused on important problems, a double-digit drop from 3 years ago. The people are speaking. They are saying that, as the gentleman said, like this chart that we went over a few weeks ago showed, giving our debt over to these foreign countries, reducing the independence of this country, pushing the burden off on our children and grandchildren, the next generation, and asking them to foot the bill, that is the issue. Health care. We have had a health care crisis in this country for how many years now? How many years? And now we are talking about an issue that does not present itself for another 40 years? These are the issues that we need to begin to talk about. We need to begin to talk about the escalating costs of health care, year in and year out, 15 percent, 20 percent; the rising, skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 percent. The most profitable industry in the world, and we are not talking about it? These are the issues that we need to focus on. And to have this charade going on on the side, this dog-and-pony show about an issue that does not present itself for another 40 years I think is misleading and not the proper execution of I think the top leader in the country. I just really believe that. It is time for some real leadership in the country, and we just do not seem to be getting it now. The poll is absolutely right. We get into these partisan squabbles. We want to work. We want to solve some of these problems. We know there are different philosophies, and it is okay to have a fight about it, but at the end of the day, do what is best for the country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we went over this a few weeks ago, and this is a portion of foreign-owned debt. It rose to 41 percent under the Bush administration. In the far left corner here, we have the year 2000 and over here, 2004. The purple is the debt held by foreigners. The aqua, turquoise, either/or, is domestically held debt and the billions of dollars, which comes to about the trillions. And in the blue, as my colleagues can see, the portion of the debt held by domestic banks, domestic concerns, domestic interests, has flat-lined. The purple is the foreign-held debt, and it begins to increase; it is starting to move up into the main and starting to even break through the border here. We can see that increase right there, and that is what worries us. It is that increase right there that says we are losing a portion of our independence, because when the Chinese, for example, own a higher and higher and higher portion of our debt, then we have to begin to factor that concern in when we are dealing with North Korea, when we are dealing with the situation in Iraq, when we are dealing with the way they are manipulating their currency. Right now, the Chinese are manipulating their currency, some say up to 40 percent. And why is the U.S. not taking a stronger stand? Why are we not being firm with the Chinese? Well, it is tough to play hardball with the bank when they are funding your debt; and that is really what is happening right now, is that the bank is becoming China and they are funding our debt, so we have less leverage over them as they begin to wipe out the manufacturing. So here we go, here is our debt, here is the chart that we are becoming way too familiar with, the national debt of $7.79 trillion, and each person shares $26,000. This is the issue. This is the crisis in this Chamber, and this is the crisis that the country needs to come to grips with.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The e-mail is 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. That is 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail. Tell us what you believe to be the main crises facing this country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I have a couple of e-mails that I would like to share from last week. We asked everyone 2 weeks ago to e-mail us in what they thought their priorities were in the country. If it was Social Security, they could say it was Social Security. If not, tell us what you think the real crises are in the country. We have Jim Munroe and Nancy Grover from Albuquerque, New Mexico: ``The number one priority has to be turning the deficit around while making the tax system fair and equitable.'' Mari Howells from Erie, Pennsylvania, a 30-something Dem who saw us a couple of weeks ago: ``Health Insurance! Our health care system is awful. It is bringing the whole country down. Number 2: the war. What a mess. Number 3: poorly funded schools.'' I am going to take a minute here to read a beautiful e-mail that we received a couple of weeks ago from a man who saw us three on C-SPAN. He was laid off on September 11, 2002, from a Fortune 500 company in Dallas, Texas. Informed that his position had been dissolved, ``and since I was one of the highest paid, 38,000 a year, on their help desk, that I had to be one of the first ones to go. I was given 2 weeks severance pay and found out through my network that the company had outsourced the help desk to an overseas vendor. I am a proud veteran of the U.S. Air Force where I served 8 years and received an honorable discharge. Before being unemployed I had great health insurance and I am in fact a cancer survivor, but after losing my job and not being able to afford the $340 monthly payment to COBRA to keep my health insurance, I had no other choice but to go to the Dallas VA hospital to register for my health care. ``I am 41 years young and I have now been unemployed for almost 3 years. My father was forced into early retirement because of his heart and my mother just recently lost her job of many years at a local bank. They could barely make it on their mediocre salary and his Social Security. I do not know what they are going to do now and now I have nothing to help them with because I do no have a savings, checking account or 401(K). ``When I was working, I used to send my mother $250 a month to help her and my father out a little bit, but I cannot do that any more. He has a temporary job at the bank that pays $13 an hour with no benefits, a lot less than I used to make but I am very happy just to be working again. God bless you.'' So these are the real people that I think we need to begin helping.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Exactly. And we have the money if we wanted it, if we wanted to ask the top 1 percent to make a sacrifice to help fund this. That money will work its way back into the economy anyway. The fact that that is bad for the economy is an argument that I have never bought into. It is the voodoo economics, the trickle-down economics theory. I would rather have it in the hands of people who are making 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a year that go out and invest in their kids and those kinds of things. But to say we do not have the money, I think, is shameful. These are good people. These are not bad people. But to choose them when you have to make decisions based on the whole society right now over this group, I think, is shameful.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A party-line vote went down. And that was on the health care side of it. That was on making sure our Guards and Reservists have coverage regardless. And the gentleman brought out the numbers and it was maybe a billion dollars, but these men and women are picking up and they are in all our districts, and they pick up and they leave their families and come back and leave and come back.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) offered a motion here to recommit a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Look at the numbers here. The reason the gentleman is upset here in trillions of dollars over 10 years, we have a graph. We have to have a graph for everything. Permanent tax cuts, 1.18 trillion over 10 years. Tax cuts for top 1 percent 800 million; VA budget, .3, 300 million. When we need to fully fund this everyone says we do not have the money, but we have the money for this, and we have the money for that. So this is the question.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. One of the comments that a previous speaker made here not too long ago was that we do not have many options. You can raise taxes or you cut spending or you grow the economy. Well, you cannot grow the economy if you are putting this tremendous burden on students, the next generation of people who are going to go out and create things and not making the proper investment into education as we have talked about before. A lot of our urban areas and a lot of our rural areas, where many of those kids go to school in poverty, do not have health care, are not getting the kind of education that they get in some of the suburban areas. Those are the kids that we need to fund, educate, and let them go out and create and grow the economy. But you cannot do that by tying a ball and chain around their neck and throwing them over the river, because they sink, and at the same time not make the kind of investments.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. There is no money.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the opportunity too. In the past several months, really since the beginning of the year, the President initiated a Social Security plan that he wanted to promote to the country, to say that privatization, these private accounts were going to be the answer to the Social Security solvency problem. We have been, just about every week since the beginning of the year that we are in session here in Washington, we have been talking about why the President's privatization scheme really is not the answer for the country. The President, when he initiated this discussion after the election, began to say that it was a crisis and it was a crisis for the country that we all needed to address. What we want to do tonight is, we want to begin by saying that Social Security is a solvent program. There is no crisis within the Social Security program. Do we need to make some minor adjustments? Of course, we do. Do we need to tinker with the program? Yes, we do. But is there a crisis there? We really do not think so. So tonight we are going to begin to talk a little bit about why Social Security is a solvent program and show a few numbers that we have shared with the American public every week that we have been on, but also to get into some of the areas where we believe a crisis does exist in this country that needs immediate attention. So we have this graph here that basically shows that Social Security is secure for many, many decades to come. These are facts. These are the Congressional Budget Office numbers that they have given us. The CBO is a nonpartisan organization, a nonpartisan group, and if they would lean one way or the other, the Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, so if they are going to lean any one way, which I do not believe that they do, they would certainly lean in favor of making it look like Social Security is less secure than it actually is. So this graph here, we can see it starts in 2005, and it goes to 2075, so it gives us a 70-year span. And from 2005 to about 2047, 2048, 2049, right in there, if we do absolutely nothing with Social Security, Social Security recipients will still receive 100 percent of their benefits. And all in the blue here. So from 2005 to the late 2040s, if we do absolutely nothing with the program, if we do not touch it at all, we are still going to get 100 percent of our benefits up to the late 2040s, 2047, 2048. So at 32 years old, after 40 years, I will be 72 years old, just about 72, on Social Security. So I will be guaranteed, if we do nothing, to at least get 100 percent of what I would earn right in here, or someone else who is 32 years old. Then, after that, from the late 2040s into 2075, one would still receive 80 percent of one's benefits if we did nothing. So what we are saying on this side of the aisle is, is there a problem? Yes, of course. From 2047 to 2075 and beyond a recipient would only get 80 percent of what they should be getting now. So that is a problem. Is that a crisis? No, that is not a crisis. Something that happens 40 years from now is not a crisis. What we want to do is just show tonight that this is not a crisis; 100 percent of the benefits will be paid until the late 2040s and, beyond, still get 80 percent. So if the President wants to sit down and work out a program, we are going to be able to deal with this 80 percent issue here coming 40-some years from now, and we will sit down and talk with the President. But, unfortunately, the plans that are floating around Congress cut into the 100 percent benefits here and begin to reduce some of the 100 percent benefits there.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I thank the gentleman. And let us take the definition and apply it to this chart. A crisis is an unstable situation of extreme danger, or difficulty. Unstable situation. Now, how could you call this, 100 percent of the benefits for the next 40 some years, how is that an unstable situation? It is a very stable situation. And I would even argue that 80 percent, without doing anything, 45 years from now is not unstable. That is a stable situation. It needs to be dealt with. But extreme danger or difficulty? How could you call from 2005 to the late 2040s extreme danger or difficulty? It does not apply here. And using the word ``crisis'' is extreme, and it is trying to scare the American public. And you see it in the poll results. The American people are beginning not to buy it. Now, we could even try to go to the second definition of what a crisis is, a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something. There is no crucial stage or turning point that needs to happen here. We are not on a brink here that we have got to change something immediately. There is no crisis here. And as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) stated very eloquently, there are many more issues that I think we need to deal with. And there was one other thing, and we are kind of moving things around a little bit here, that I want to share just briefly.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Nothing to be sorry about.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is the ultimate question, and I know the gentleman wants to talk about it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely. The source is CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan. The most scary aspect of all of this is if we are spending 400-some billion dollars more than we are taking in, we are borrowing that from somewhere because we do not have it. Tax revenues bring us to this line here, and we are spending that much more, up to $400 billion more than we have in the kitty that we are taking in every year. So we have to go out and borrow it. This is the scary part. Who are we borrowing the money from?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I had a Social Security town hall meeting last night at Warren G. Harding High School in Warren, Ohio; and we were having a discussion about these kinds of issues. And one of the gentlemen, as we were talking about him as a small business owner, self-employed, he had to pay his own Social Security tax. He had to pay the whole amount, the employer's share and the employee's share for himself. And he was struggling because he had health care issues that he had to deal with. The health care costs were going through the roof. He had two kids in college. And tuition costs in Ohio have doubled over the past few years. And when we get back after the break we are going to get into a little more about the cost of college tuition. But the point is, the Social Security privatization scheme sounds like a good idea to some employers, because the way that the blueprint has it set up is that the employee will be able to take 4 percent and divert it to an account, and the employer will not have to match that 4 percent; and so it is basically a tax break for the business person, which may be okay for small business folks and help them a great deal. But what we are saying as Democrats is, why are we not dealing with the real issue, the health care costs that are going through the roof? And if we want to help small business people, then we need to use the Democratic proposal that we have that is going to help small business people contain health care costs and contain tuition costs and give them aid and assistance and grants and lower tuition costs with block grants to different universities. We have a plan to do that. And what we are saying is, let us stick together on the greatest social program in the history of mankind, and let us fix these other programs that have been causing a great deal of economic pain to the small businessperson. We want to be there, and we have a plan to do it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, I thank the gentleman. And after this we are going to move on to what we believe that the real issues are that need to be dealt with immediately, issues that we think are causing unstable situations, issues that we think are providing extreme danger or extreme difficulty for families here and issues, quite frankly, that we think the country is at a crucial stage or at a turning point on. We want to talk about what we believe those issues really are. Now, last week we asked Americans who were watching to write in and to e-mail us with what they thought were the immediate issues that needed to be dealt with, what was the crisis that they believed the country needed to address. And I am just going to share a couple of these because we want to get into some other issues. Mrs. Richard from Kansas said she had been watching and listening to our program on C- SPAN. Our country now has so many needs. And we asked her to give them to us and she said, I will write them to you. To me, the number one need is to get out of Iraq. Stop losing lives and spending money. That may be a crisis. Probably is. After that, health care, fixing our national deficit, which we are definitely going to get into tonight, and many more things that need to be fixed. She appreciates the concern. Christie Fox, from the gentleman's great State of Florida, she is a second generation American. And on C-SPAN you asked for our comments or suggestions on what we think is important to America. Safety, the environment, the oceans heating and rising, need for solar power, recycling, windmills, fuel efficient vehicles, terrorism, which is a major issue that we are not really dealing with here, and to keep God in America. Great issues that we think may be or will have more of a profound effect if we address them immediately. So, again, we ask the citizens who are out there tonight to give us an e-mail, what you believe to be your crisis of choice, that is, something that we need to deal with immediately in the United States of America. Send us something, 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. That is the number 30, the word ``something,'' and then dems, D-E-M-S @ mail.house.gov. Send us what you think, because, quite frankly, we do not believe that Social Security that is solvent for the next 45 years and will pay 100 percent of the benefits and then for the next 20-some years and into the future will still provide 80 percent is not a crisis.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We have a discharge petition too that will allow Members of Congress to sign it and discharge it out of the committee process and bring it right to the floor. We have had this debate. We can bring it to the floor and let us vote on it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think this is the issue for me, that this is the crisis. This is just the issue that how can we say that a problem 40 years out from now is the crisis when you look at the numbers here. This is the crisis here. This is the manufacturing jobs loss, and I will go through some quick charts here. Manufacturing jobs lost. In Ohio we lost 216,000. In Florida, the gentleman's home State, they lost almost 73,000. All the red States here have lost more than 20 percent of jobs in their States: Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Illinois, all of these. And all throughout the country, the only two States with any kind of net gain are North Dakota and Nevada. That is the crisis and that is the issue that we need to be dealing with here in the United States.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, so it is nonpartisan. It is from June 1998 to February 2005. This is the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics controlled by a Republican, so it is not any lies that we are just trying to stoke up propaganda here. These States that are purple have lost between 15 and 20 percent. The green States have lost between 10 and 15 percent. The yellow States between 5 and 10 percent. We are getting decimated in our manufacturing base, and these are the jobs that pay well. These jobs are going to China. The high-tech jobs are going to India. Now, another crisis, our overall U.S. trade deficit which led to the enormous job loss right here, overall trade deficit over $600 billion last year. We are buying $600 billion more worth of products than we are selling. And look at the growth. This is the startling thing. This is not just a kind of a temporary blip in the screen. In 1991 we were a little over $50 billion, or not quite $50 billion; and look at this, the steady growth. And these have been the trade agreements that we have been signing, and especially when we cranked up trade with China, bang, right down at the bottom, bingo, in 2004 over $600 billion in trade deficit. Of that the main culprit in this whole deal has been with China, another crisis that we need to deal with. I mean, how we can say Social Security is the main issue is beyond me. Again, trade deficits from 1991 to 2004. Again, a slow gradual, this is what we call in economic terms, and I am not an economist, this is what you call a trend. This is a trend that is going on in the country and has been for a good many years now, U.S. trade deficit with China over 160-some billion dollars a year. And we can see it just continue to decline. It will probably be worse next year. And when we see the job loss in Ohio, in the Midwest, all over the country except for Nevada and North Dakota, this is what is causing it. Companies are moving from the United States, not making the investment here in the country, making it in China; and we are getting walloped. Now, the most important issue as we are running these huge trade deficits and we are also running a national deficit, and let me just show one, before we show that one and then I will let the gentleman talk about the other, not only are we running huge trade deficits; we are also running a record national, domestic deficit on our own budget here. This red line starts with President Johnson where we pretty much were balancing our budgets all the way along, and we pretty much stayed steady up and down throughout the 70s. And into the 80s we got into the pretty high deficit through the Reagan and Bush era. That is the red line coming down close to $300 billion in our national deficit. That means the budget money that we spend out of here, we were spending $300 billion more than we were taking in. And then the Clinton era, the balanced budget passed in 1993. Not one Republican vote, Democrat House, Senate, White House; Al Gore broke the tie in the Senate as Vice President. That led to booming surpluses in the United States. And then when the next administration came in here, we are again with record deficits. Now, will a real fiscal conservative please stand up, because we do not have anymore here. And this is the kind of deficit that you are passing on to your kids and your grandkids and the scary thing that the gentleman will talk about right now.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right because you can have, and Mitt Romney was in front of the Committee on Education and the Workforce last week, the Republican governor from Massachusetts, and he said you cannot have a tier two economy and a tier one military. And, unfortunately, we are moving into a tier two economy. We were talking about the trade deficits and then our national deficit and the debt. The deficit is what we accrue every year. We are $400 billion last year. The debt is the overall debt of the whole country, which is almost $8 trillion, but last year was over $400 billion. Here is the portion of foreign-owned debt in our country that rose to 41 percent under this administration. So this is the bottom line here in the blue. Of all of our debt, that portion is held by domestic interests, from this here, the turquoise, a nice shade of turquoise, I must say. The next level is the percentage of our marketable U.S. Treasury debt held by foreign interests, and this goes back to 2000. So over in California, 2000. Over here on the East Coast, it is 2004. Here we have domestic-held debt up to $2.5 trillion. The rest here in purple was foreign owned. As we move in 2001 and 2002 and 2003, you can see that the purple gets bigger. It gets up into Maine from the Carolinas. This purple is foreign-held debt. Basically what this chart says, and it is continuing to increase as the years go on, as we run these deficits that we had in the last chart, that we have been running as we are borrowing that money; more and more of that money is coming from foreign interests. This is a dangerous situation that we are putting the country in. As the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) stated, we are on the Committee on Armed Services. We see this in the committee hearings and with the poppy in Afghanistan. We see this dealing with the Chinese in their increase in military spending and the issue of Taiwan, and North Korea is beginning to test nuclear weapons. The more power we cede to foreign interests dealing with our own personal monetary situation, the more dangerous a situation we are going to be in. It is a bad political move, it is a bad economic move, and it threatens our country as well.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 89, and I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) and offer very warm thanks to the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) and to the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), for their leadership and support on this resolution which honors the life and the work of Sister Dorothy Stang. I would also like to acknowledge Sister Dorothy's family, her sister, Marguerite, and her family from Fairfax, Virginia, and her brother, David Stang from Denver, Colorado. Sister Dorothy was an American Catholic nun with the Order of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She was originally from Ohio, but had moved to Brazil nearly 40 years ago with four other sisters of Notre Dame in response to a request from then-Pope John XXIII who asked religious communities around the world to serve in Latin America. She worked in earnest to profess the order's mission, to educate and stand with the poor. Sister Dorothy also worked with the Pastoral Land Commission, an organization of the Catholic Church that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants. Sister Dorothy's selfless way of life brought comfort and hope to an area of the world wrought with corruption and despair. She was committed to social justice, and worked tirelessly to help poor farmers with sustainable development techniques, minister and teach the men of the village to be faith leaders, and help in the building of houses and school rooms. Sister Dorothy taught the women of Brazil to sew and to sell clothing to finance the building of a dam to provide electricity to their community. She pioneered 21 community centers. These centers taught agriculture, health care, education, and spirituality. Although she was a profound leader and was loved by many, her fate did not parallel her life's work. Sister Dorothy was brutally murdered on February 12 of this year after receiving several death threats from loggers and landowners. Knowing of this grave danger, Sister Dorothy wrote, ``I do not want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.'' She then went on to say, ``I am grateful to Notre Dame for not asking me to leave. This shows we are aware of the needs of the poor. The Sisters have said they are worried about any safety. It is not my safety, but that of the people which matters.'' At the time of her death, Sister Dorothy had just traveled to drop off cloth and food to families whose homes had been burned by ranchers and loggers. She was approached by two gunmen, and knowing her fate, reached into her cloth bag, took out her Bible and began reading the Beatitudes, ``Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.'' Sister Dorothy Stang is a true martyr. She lived and died teaching and fighting for peace and justice among a people who were poor and disenfranchised. She lifted up the oppressed and taught people about their rights as human beings. She was named ``Woman of the Year'' by the state of Para for her work in the Amazon, and in 2004 she received the Humanitarian of the Year award from the Brazilian Bar Association for her work in the region. Sister Dorothy's dream was to have an area of land set aside by the federal government of Brazil as a federal reserve where the poor families and landless peasants would be safe, where they could farm their land, build their own income-producing businesses, and above all, where they could live in peace and dignity without threats to their lives. Sister Dorothy reminds us all to be courageous and to work for what we believe in. We must all be champions of our principles and causes, and that our religion is not merely a set of beliefs, but a series of actions. She gave her life to protect the downtrodden and forgotten. While her brutal murder shows the great challenges we face in the pursuit of social justice, her life shows the awesome power one human being has to change the world. I hope that this simple act of commemoration will not be the end of Sister Stang's story, but the very beginning. That Congress will use this opportunity to demonstrate its concern for inequality and poverty all over the world by making available the resources needed to combat these social ills. Finally, Mr. Speaker, President Kennedy once said in a speech at Amherst College, honoring Robert Frost, that ``A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.'' Today we honor a fearless, selfless defender of peace, a champion in sustainable development, a person affectionately known as ``Irma Doroty,'' and ``Angel of the Amazon,'' a brave martyr, Sister Dorothy Stang.