[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 34 (Wednesday, February 28, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2021-H2028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE 30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Clarke). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the
[[Page H2022]]
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 60 minutes as the
designee of the majority leader.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be
here on the House floor to kick off another segment of the 30-something
Working Group Special Order, soon to be joined by a group of 30-
somethings in the Democratic Caucus to address issues pertaining to not
only young people throughout the country, but citizens of our country
and the kind of leadership that the Democratic Congress is providing
here. So I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Several issues that have been discussed prior to this by our friends
on the other side that I would like to at least comment on. The first
one is: The economy is going great.
I read an article with great interest today out of The New York
Times. The title is ``Growth in U.S. Economy is Slower Than Thought.''
This economy is only growing at 2.2 percent, in large measure, due to
the fact that we haven't balanced our budget. We are nowhere near
balancing our budget because of the Republican leadership in the House
since 1994, and in the Senate and also in the White House. For many,
many years, the Republican answer to balancing the budget or trying to
make our payments is to go off to China and go to the banks in China
and borrow money from the Chinese government in order to fund the
increase in spending that the Republican House, Republican Senate, and
Republican White House were pursuing.
And one friend, Madam Speaker, the gentleman from Texas, said that
the economy has created 7.2 million new jobs.
When President Clinton was in and the Democrats balanced the budget
in 1993 without one Republican vote, the expansion years under
President Clinton, we created 20 million jobs. Welfare rolls were the
lowest they had been. So you have to balance your budget, so you stop
borrowing money from China.
And we have got a lot of other issues dealing with China as well.
They are manipulating their currency, Madam Speaker, and we are
starting to generate some support in the Democratic Congress for
addressing this issue. China is not giving the proper alignment to
their currency, and it gives them a 40-percent advantage to goods that
they ship over here. And so if you have a company in the United States
of America, like I do in Warren, Ohio, called Wheatland Tube, and Mr.
Altmire, who may join us here later, their raw materials cost as much
as the product from China when it hits the shores of the United States,
final product, because there is a 40-percent advantage that the Chinese
have, Madam Speaker.
So because these issues haven't been addressed, Wheatland Tube is
laying off 30 or 40 people, white collar jobs. So our friends have not
addressed any of the issues.
But they have been talking about an issue that is near and dear to my
heart, and that is the Employee Free Choice Act. This is a wonderful
piece of legislation that is going to allow members of a workforce to
merely sign if they want to start a union or not. And I hope that our
friends recognize why. And I am from Youngstown, Ohio; so I find it
funny when our friends start talking about these big labor bosses, to
try to portray good, hardworking Americans who want to work for a
decent wage and have health care, that somehow that is wrong and
somehow that is unAmerican.
So this Employee Free Choice Act will allow our folks, our workers,
to merely sign a card. And if half sign that they want to start a
union, it is basic democracy at the workplace. You will be able to
start a union.
Here is the reason why there is so much anxiety in the United States
of America: We have had economic growth, but if you are not in the top
1 percent, you are getting squeezed. If you don't have a lot of money
in the stock market, you are getting squeezed. And it took us almost 10
years to raise the minimum wage for average workers, and one of the
first things the Democratic Congress did under the leadership of the
Speaker, Speaker Pelosi, was to raise the minimum wage to try to get
everybody in on the game.
But here is what has happened: This is from 2000 to 2004. The red
line that is increasing is productivity, the change in productivity,
the growth in productivity percentage-wise from 2000 to 2004. You see a
tremendous increase in productivity.
Median income is the black line. It has actually gone down. So for
the first time in history, increased levels of productivity have led to
the decrease in median income. That means that our globalization,
although it may benefit certain people and certain sectors of the
economy, is leaving a lot of people behind.
So if workers want to join together to say how do we be a part of the
solution here, how do we try to increase income? I think we should
allow them to do that. We are not saying they have to. There is nobody
intimidating anybody.
And my friend from Tennessee made a mistake, Madam Speaker, when she
spoke. She was saying that the National Labor Relations Act and the
National Labor Relations Board were there so workers didn't intimidate
other workers to join unions.
The whole premise of the National Labor Relations Act is because
business folks in that time had a tremendous advantage on firing
workers and threatening workers. So we don't run from the fact that we
want to allow people in the workplace to be empowered, and this is the
reason we need to do it.
Now, as we do this, we also need an expansion of our international
standards that we have. We have clean air in the United States, and it
needs to be a lot cleaner, but we have made great progress. We need
clean water in the United States. I am from the State of Ohio where the
Cuyahoga River caught on fire because there was so much industry and
pollution that it literally caught on fire.
We need to make sure that these standards that we have here in the
United States somehow are transferred to the global economy so that
when we are dealing with China, when we are dealing with India, when we
are dealing with some of the Asian Pacific countries, we try to lift up
the standards. It doesn't do us much good to clean the air in the
United States of America and have dirty air in China. We are not making
progress. So we have a long way to go. And I think what we are doing
this week is making sure that our workers in the United States of
America are allowed to do what we all do on election day, and that is
join together and vote, and they should be allowed to join together and
to vote as well.
One of the myths that we have with the Employee Free Choice Act is,
well, you are going to have to sign a card and someone is going to
know.
If you want to sign a card or a petition to even have an election,
you have to sign a card or a petition in order to even have an election
to start a union anyway. So we are not doing anything that is not
already going on. You are either going to sign a petition to vote on it
or you are going to sign a petition to actually create a union. And if
you are willing to stick your neck out to have the vote, you are
certainly going to be willing to stick your neck out to sign the
petition in order to cast a ballot to create a union.
{time} 1600
So I think we are dealing with very troubling times. We need to make
sure that we are representing all of our country because, quite
frankly, Madam Speaker, for the longest time in this country, the last
decade or so, at least from this institution here that we represent in
the House of Representatives, there has been such a tilt, such an
emphasis on cutting taxes for the top 1 percent. And you are not going
to see the Democratic Party raise taxes on the middle class at all.
But if we have a choice to make between borrowing the money from the
Chinese in order to fund our government or asking people who are
billionaires to pay a little bit more in taxes so that we can provide
health care for children, we are going to ask the millionaires and the
billionaires in the United States to pay a little bit more and to meet
their obligation and to meet their responsibility to society. They have
benefited from the United States stock market. They have benefited from
the protection of the United States military. They have benefited from
the infrastructure. They have
[[Page H2023]]
benefited from the Internet, which was developed from public research.
They benefit from the vaccines. They benefit from the Centers for
Disease Control. They benefit from public education. So if we ask the
wealthiest to meet their obligation and their responsibility, as a
beneficiary of this great society, to put back into our society in
order to keep the game going, we are going to need to do that.
And if you question the priorities of the Democrats, all you need to
do is look at what is going to happen in our supplemental, where there
is going to be an additional millions of dollars, to the tune of $750
million, for health care for children, Children's Health Insurance
Program. Do you want to talk about priorities, Madam Speaker? Under the
Republican leadership, 6 million children were eligible for the SCHIP
program, but weren't registered.
So all we are saying is we are going to take every opportunity we can
possibly get to make sure that those kids get the kind of health care
that they need and they deserve in the wealthiest country on the face
of this Earth in the entire history of our planet, Mr. Murphy.
And we don't shrink from these. I would be happy to talk about our
decisions that we have made here in this Congress since we started
several months ago to anybody who wants to listen. We passed the
minimum wage increase out of this House with $1.3 billion in tax
credits for small businesses so that they can reinvest back into their
companies to keep the game going, to keep the economy going.
We reduced and cut in half the interest rates on student loans, which
will save the average person who takes out a student loan almost $4,500
over the course of the loan. That is what the Democrats did in the
first 100 hours. We increased the minimum wage. We cut student loan
interest rates in half. We repealed corporate welfare by about $13
billion. We are going to take that money and we are going to invest it
into alternative energy research.
We put PAYGO on because we are signaling that we are going to make a
balanced budget a priority in this House. Got to be done. Got to be
done. We have implemented some of the recommendations from the 9/11
Commission report to make the country safer, and we allowed the
Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices on
behalf of the Medicare recipients.
That is what you call governing. That is what you call moving an
agenda forward. And that includes making sure that these workers who
work every day, work hard every day, go to work every day, work
overtime, lead increases in productivity, that they can at least
benefit a little bit from it.
And I would be happy to yield to our fearless leader from
Connecticut, the fighting Irishman, Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. And it is quite an
honor to be able to share the floor with a gentleman as articulate as
yourself.
I know where you are from, and I can imagine that you have a lot of
families, probably including your own, that shares the story of my
family. My great-grandfather and my grandfather both worked at Fafnir
Ball Bearing, which was a massive ball bearing factory in New Britain,
Connecticut. It employed thousands of people in the New Britain area
and partnered together with the Stanley Tool factory. Those two
together employed over 10,000 people in New Britain in its heyday.
The city looks very different today. Those sites are either
brownfields with nobody in them, or now sort of struggling office
parks. My office, which I inherited from Congresswoman Johnson, is in
actually a site that used to be owned by those manufacturers.
But the story that we are talking about today is not necessarily a
story of manufacturing, it is a story of the workers that were there.
It is no coincidence to me that as you chart the history of our middle
class in this country, as you chart the growing disparity between those
that are doing very, very well and those that are struggling just to
get by and cope with the daily cost of their lives, I don't think that
it is just a coincidence that during that time, as we have seen a
middle class vanish before our eyes, or at least become on the
precipice of vanishing, and you see that disparity, that gap between
rich and poor grow bigger and bigger, that that has happened during the
same time that we have seen unionization rates drop through the floor.
Because the middle class that my family came up through, which is that
working-class middle class, the folks that are making enough money to
get by, enough money to give their kids a little bit better chance at
life than they had, but they are not doing enough to buy a second home,
they are not doing enough to buy many luxuries, that group of
Americans, diminishing by the year, doesn't have a lobbyist up here.
That group of Americans doesn't have a pool of money in which they can
employ people to advocate on their behalf here in this Chamber.
The group that has done that historically over time have been unions.
They advocate to make sure that their ranks are swelled as well, but
they also have been, frankly, the people that have been advocating year
in and year out up here in this House to make sure that we have a
healthy middle class.
And so I am fairly unapologetic about my support for the bill
tomorrow, that we are going to basically level the playing field. I
think that is what you were talking about, Mr. Ryan, is that we are not
giving any unfair advantage to workers, we are simply saying that we
want to level the playing field when it comes to organization in this
country. And I think that is the right thing to do for workers. But as
a member of a family that only has survived because of a society and an
economy that once produced jobs that had real pensions and real health
care benefits attached to them, we need to start figuring out a way to
make sure that those folks get advocated for here in this House.
And as you recited that long and important list of achievements here
in the House during the first 100 hours, that is all about that group
of people. That is all about making this House a place where those
middle-class, working-class folks get a voice: again, minimum wage;
taking away the big tax breaks for the oil companies; starting to lower
the cost of health care; investing in life-saving research. That is
bread-and-butter work for the middle class.
The gist of it is this: This bill, the Employee Free Choice Act,
tomorrow is going to level the playing field to allow some of these
folks that have been before Congress fighting for a very long time for
that healthy middle class to be able to continue to emphasize and
increase that voice. And that is as important as anything we do here
because, as Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz have been
talking about on this floor night in and night out for far too long,
the voices that have mattered here have been the folks that have the
big wallets that can pay the high-priced lobbyists to come in this
building. And we don't begrudge the work that people who advocate on
behalf of people do here, but frankly, we need advocates here for folks
that don't have those dollars. And whether we like it or not, unions in
this country have done that job, and they have done it well with
decreased numbers because of a system we have set up that ends up
making it very difficult for workers to organize.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And this is not by any stretch of the imagination
are we saying that workers don't need to be flexible, unions don't need
to be flexible. We are now competing with the globe. And our workers
now, as we have seen in large measure through the suppression of wages
and everything else, this is a global workforce where just from 1985,
where it was 2.5 billion people, now it is up to almost 6 billion in
the global workforce. So that in and of itself increases the level of
competition for our own workers, which has led to the wage issue that
we have to deal with and everything else.
So we are not saying that unions don't need to be flexible. I come
from an area of the country where we had a lot of steel mills. Now
there is just one or two left of the integrated variety, and the
tremendous, tremendous changes that the steelworkers have gone through.
And I have a good friend, Gary Steinbeck, Madam Speaker, a friend back
home who is subdistrict director for the United Steelworkers in Ohio,
and the tremendous changes in work rules that the steelworkers have
made in order to keep the industry
[[Page H2024]]
afloat. These folks are ready to sit down and figure this out, and they
know that.
But our point is look what has been happening here. This is a chart,
``Change in Share of National Income from 2003 to 2004.'' The bottom 99
percent has had negative 2 percent change in their share of the
national income; the top 1 percent has seen almost a 2 percent increase
in their share of national income. This is a structure that cannot
stand, man. It cannot stand, man. This cannot stay the way it is. This
cannot continue.
You can't have this separation where the top 1 percent is increasing
their share of the pie and everybody else is getting reduced. You can't
have it. And so what we have tried to do here is bring some equity to
the system and, since we have been in Congress, increasing the minimum
wage; cutting student loan interest rates in half; investing in stem
cell research to try to open up another industry where we can create
jobs for our kids, the next generation; making sure we repeal the
corporate welfare for the oil companies and invest that money in
alternative energy sources so we can open up a new sector of our
economy with research and health care and biotechnologies and
alternative energy sources. We have a long-term agenda here by helping
people today and open up these two new sectors. This can't go on. We
can't continue like this, Mr. Murphy, and call ourselves the greatest
democracy in the world.
And when you go around the world and you are trying to sell democracy
and capitalism, that is not a very good argument. You know, that is
kind of what a lot of countries in a lot of other parts of the world
look like, where the top 1 percent get all the benefits, and the rest
of the rest of their country doesn't see the progress.
Can I make one final point, because I am getting worked up. We only
have 300 million people in the country. We don't have the luxury of
having a billion people like they do in India. We don't have the luxury
of 1.3- or 1.4 billion like they do in China. We only have 300 million
people. So we need to make sure that everybody is on the field playing
for us, educated, skilled, and moving the country forward. This cannot
stand, man.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Here is what we are talking about here. So
how do we take that chart that you are showing there, which I agree
cannot continue to be the way that our society operates. We cannot be a
flourishing democracy, we cannot be a flourishing economy if we have so
many people doing so poorly and a small group of people doing very
well. So how do we go about changing that?
And I think the message is that we are not talking in this Chamber
about big new government programs. We are not talking about creating
new departments and new bureaucracies. All we are talking about is take
the existing programs, take the existing set of rules and make them
fair. Make them fair. Give everybody a chance to compete. That is what
increasing the minimum wage is. I mean, 10 years, while every other
cost goes up and the minimum wage stays where it is? Just bring it up
to where it needs to be. Just match inflation with your minimum wage.
Student loan rates. As the cost of college goes up 41 percent since
2001, well, let's help families match that increasing cost of higher
education.
And the same thing with the Employee Free Choice Act.
{time} 1615
Let us have our eyes open to what the reality is on the ground for
those who want to organize. Let us recognize how employers have changed
some of their tactics, and let us give employees the opportunity to
operate on that same level playing field.
That is what this is all about. This is about taking the rules that
we have and making them fair, not coming in and creating big new
government bureaucracies to help these folks.
One of the most important things we did here was the bill in the
first 100 hours that allows the Federal Government to negotiate lower
prices with the drug companies. That is a great example of one of the
few instances where this Congress did create a new bureaucracy, and
when they created it, they set rules that disadvantaged regular,
average taxpayers and the senior citizens who were supposed to benefit.
They created this big new health care program and created the rules to
tilt the playing field in favor of those people who needed no extra
help.
This Congress has to be about taking those programs that are right
there in front of our faces and making them work again. I think if we
do that, we will live up to your mandate that we cannot let this stand.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It cannot stand, man. It cannot stand. I totally
agree with you.
The fact that our friends, and can you imagine our friends on the
other side of the aisle, our Republican friends, who are deficit hawks,
and they are still talking about it. It is hilarious to hear, Madam
Speaker, the contradictory aspects of their words and their deeds.
There is still a lot of talk about, you know, being a deficit hawk and
balancing the budget.
It was the Republican party, Madam Speaker, that started the Medicare
prescription drug bill. They originally said it was $400 billion, then
it was $700 billion, and then it was a trillion. And the night we voted
on it at 3 in the morning, it was a $400 billion bill. That was a good
deal. Then we find out months later it was actually a trillion dollars,
and that the actuaries that knew it was going to cost a trillion
dollars, they weren't allowed to tell anybody.
So this Congress voted on legislation without all of the facts, and a
major fact was the cost. But the point here is our friends not only
passed that bill without telling us all of the information, they also
put, as you said, a provision in there that explicitly would not allow
the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug
prices on behalf of the Medicare recipients. They didn't leave it
ambiguous, they stated in the bill you're not allowed to negotiate down
drug prices on behalf of all of these millions of seniors who want to
participate in this new drug benefit.
Now did it have anything to do with the pharmaceutical lobby being up
here so much and donating all kinds of money, I will leave that for the
American people to decide. But the fact of the matter is, within the
first 100 hours that we got in, we changed that provision. Once we
passed it out of here, we need to get it through the Senate and
hopefully the President will sign it. But in our legislation we allowed
the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug
prices.
We hear a lot about the free market, but what is a better
representation of the free market than allowing all these consumers to
join together and negotiate down drug prices or anything else on behalf
of the recipients.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You spoke earlier about the need for
unions to be flexible. I couldn't agree more. This is an inexorable
march to a very new global economy, and nobody can deny that is
happening, and we have to ask our workers and the unions that represent
them, just like we ask our employers, to figure out a way so America
can compete in that new environment.
You talked about the steel industry. That is a remarkable instance.
Actually, not that remarkable; it happens more than I think people are
given credit for, of workers and industry really coming together before
this body and singing a very similar tune.
We have to remember that as much press might be given to unions and
the companies that they work for fighting over contracts, when it comes
down to it, both of them only are able to prosper if the economy is
strong and if their company is strong. So on the vast majority of this
that they are going to come and talk to this Congress about, they are
going to advocate in their communities for, they are going to be on the
same page.
When you talk about that, maybe there is no better example than our
health care system. You are talking about it in the context of our new
Medicare prescription drug program, but if we want to figure out a way
to compete in this world, we have to figure out why $1,500 of every car
sold in this country goes for retiree health care benefits compared to
only a couple of hundred dollars in Japanese manufacturing plants. We
have to figure out a way to deal with the fact that 16 percent of every
dollar spent in this country goes to health care costs compared to 9 or
10 cents in most of the
[[Page H2025]]
countries that we compete with. We put an exorbitant amount of money
into employee benefits and health care in general, which puts us at a
tremendous competitive disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.
That is something that employers, workers, government officials, we
should all be able to agree on. We should all sit here and try to
tackle that very grave question of how do we get health care costs
under control. That is the salvation of American manufacturers and
American small businesses. Frankly, it is also the salvation of
American workers and unions. If we can figure out a way to have that
conversation, that benefits everybody.
We have given a lot of emphasis and put a lot of light on the fact
that everything we have done here as part of that 100-hours agenda has
had very large numbers of our friends from the Republican side of the
aisle supporting us here. You have the numbers right in front of you.
You can tell the story, Mr. Ryan.
Sometimes government gets shed in a light that tries to accentuate
controversy, just as sometimes the relationship between workers and
their employers tends to be told in a manner that accentuates adversity
and strife.
Well, in this Chamber, in my first 8 weeks as a Member of Congress,
it has been remarkable the amount of bipartisan cooperation we have
seen. It shows in the vote totals. Maybe it doesn't show in the
headlines, but it shows in the vote totals.
I think the same story can be told about the relationship between
workers and employers in this country. I think there will be a bunch of
people grousing about what comes out of this House tomorrow, but I
think in the end, by leveling that playing field, we will stimulate a
lot of productive cooperative relationships in our economy.
I thank the Members of the 30-something Working Group who have over
the last 2 to 3 years stood up on this House floor to talk about the
fact that this place had to work together. I think a lot of sectors of
our economy, a lot of members of our community takes cues from what
happens in Washington. I think to the degree they see this place just
being about Democrats and Republicans fighting, then I think they may
reflect that in their operations and in their daily life. I thank
members of the 30-something Working Group and other Members who have
talked about bipartisanship. I think what has happened here in the past
several weeks is going to be instructive to a lot of relationships in
our country and in our economy going forward.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. To further our point, this is real median household
incomes as to why we need to do this. The Free Choice Act that we are
going to pass out of this House tomorrow, it is not for the employers
who treat their workers well which most are. It is for a few people
that are obviously getting mistreated and they want to join together.
Now that seems to me a basic principle of our democratic society.
This is real median incomes from 2000. In 2000, they were $47,500. In
2005, it is $46,300, a decline. This is what we are talking about.
Now you can either be in a position of power and say that is fine and
you are not going to do anything about it, or you are going to be in a
position of power and say we are going to try to help, we are going to
try to fix this. Do we have all the answers, no. But we are going to
try to raise the minimum wage so this person may get a pay raise. We
are going to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, so maybe if you are
having a problem and want to join together and try to affect this
situation, you can. We are not saying you have to, we are saying you
can.
And if you happen to be this same family who has seen a decline and
you have a kid in school and you are taking out loans, we are going to
cut the interest rate loan in half to try to close this gap a little
bit because we are in a position of responsibility. We are not here to
give away the store, but we are here to say there are issues where we
can help people.
You know what, if we have to ask somebody who makes a million dollars
a year to help us do this, to invest in education, invest in the stem
cell research and invest in alternative energy resources, we have to do
it.
As a politician, as a Member of Congress, I would love to go to all
of my constituents and say you all get a tax cut, and we are going to
lower your tuition costs, we are going to provide health care for poor
kids, we are going to retrain workers, and we are going to build roads
and bridges, we are going to provide for the defense of the country to
make all this possible, and we are going to have stable financial
markets, but we are also going to give you a tax cut. We are going to
put a court system in place so that we have the rule of law.
You know, one of the most expensive things to do is have a justice
system with police and sheriff departments and courts and judges and
attorneys and public defenders and prosecutors to make this whole thing
go, to enforce contract law. That is all expensive stuff. All we are
saying is we are trying to keep this thing rolling, man. We have had a
pretty good thing going on. We just want to keep it going, and you
can't see the top 1 percent do well and the bottom 99 percent, as I was
showing in the earlier chart, not do well, actually see a decline in
income by 2 percent.
So what we need to do is move forward in a very comprehensive way,
not in a radical way, but some of the stuff we have already done.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I was asked a question at a Chamber of
Commerce meeting that I went to back in my district last week. Someone
challenged me and asked a question that went something like this. They
said if you had the choice to take a dollar and put it back into the
economy through the private sector or through the public sector, which
one do you think does a better job at stimulating our economy. I kind
of didn't understand the gist of the question.
What he was getting at was this idea, I think, that he thinks that
people on this side of the aisle somehow think that government spending
should be done for the purposes of stimulating our economy. Listen,
that couldn't be further from the truth. What we want to do is decide
on a set of services and a set of priorities that the government will
be a part of, and then find the money that is sufficient to pay for
that.
We all agree that if we have our choice, every extra dollar goes
right back into people's pockets. Every extra dollar we have goes right
back into the economy. All we need to agree on here, and it is a big
all, is what those set of priorities and services are. People in my
district think one of them should be investing in stem cell research.
That is just my district. But they think you know what, one of the
things that we can probably do better together rather than separately,
rather than simply through philanthropic contributions, is to take on
some of the most insidious and terrible diseases known to man. That is
something they think we should do.
It wasn't agreed upon by this Chamber until the Democrats took back
this House and Nancy Pelosi took over the Speaker's chair, but now we
include it in the group of things that we think we are going to do
better together.
I think we all agree that every extra dollar we have goes right back
into this economy. But let us think about this. When we are talking
about putting dollars back into the lands of middle class folks, lower
middle class folks, working class folks, whether it is through tax
breaks to small businesses that employ them, whether it is through a
cut in the student loan interest rate, or whether it is through a
minimum wage bill that gives them a little more every week, we know
that every single one of those dollars is going right back into the
economy.
Now that is, in part, because there is not a lot of flexible income
for people in that situation today. Every dollar they get has to go
back into the economy. When you talk about tax cuts and where they
should go, you talk about new government programs and whether they
should benefit the pharmaceutical companies or whether they should
benefit senior citizens, I will take middle class workers, I will take
senior citizens every time, not just because I think they are who we
should be here sticking up for, but because I know that every dollar we
put back in their pocket is going to end up at the local florist, is
going to end up at the local grocery store, is maybe going to end up
being put into a local charity or community group. We are talking about
recycling good community money when
[[Page H2026]]
we are talking about trying to give a leg up, Mr. Ryan.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. There was a funny article in, I think it was Roll
Call when we first got in how frightened the banks were about the whole
student loan deal.
{time} 1630
Because we have been talking about possibly doing just direct student
loans, here is the government money, here is a student, you give him
the money, he takes it and he pays you back with a little bit of
interest, boom, done. That sounds pretty efficient to me.
Well, the banks are upset because they were worried that if we
changed the system as it was, that they were not going to make money,
the banks, thanks to the student loans. And I am sorry, but we are not
here to make you money. You want to talk about welfare, you want to
talk about getting on the public dole, my God, you go out and compete
with everybody else. We are not here to pay you 6 percent or 8 percent
on a student loan. We are here to get a kid into college that cannot
afford it otherwise. That is our responsibility, and this kid is going
to get a degree and then a master's degree, and he is going to help us
create this new economy.
Here is what we are talking about with cutting student loan interest
rates in half, the stem cell bill for stem cell research, and
alternative energy, repealing the corporate welfare.
We have got to create new industries. Whether you vote for the free
trade agreements or not, we are in a global economy, and we are
competing with China and India and the rest of the world. As we see
some of the traditional manufacturing move offshore, some legitimately,
some not so legitimately, because of what China's doing with their
currency, we have got to come up with what the new industries are. So
what we have tried to do is invest in the stem cell research and invest
in alternative energies, the future job creators, and then also make
sure that college is affordable by increasing the Pell Grant and making
sure we cut student loan interest rates in half so kids will go to
college and then have these long-term sectors of the economy that are
growing that they can move into.
But if we do not have healthy, educated citizens moving in, getting
educated, moving into college and helping us create this economy, all
this is for naught. We need a lot more people creating a new economy
than we did 50 years ago.
My grandfather worked in a steel mill. He went to high school until
10th or 11th grade. That was another world ago, and unfortunately in
this institution, if we start playing the same game we have been
playing for 50 years, and I think both sides, and I think we have
recognized this because the minimum wage bill that we passed had $1.3
billion in tax cuts for small businesses to reinvest back into their
companies.
So the idea of if you cut taxes for the rich, they are going to
invest back in the United States and create jobs, that is done. We know
that. They get a tax cut, and they invest it in Asia, okay. It is your
money; do what you want with it. But let us not pretend they are going
to somehow build a factory in Niles, Ohio, and hire a thousand people.
Not going to happen.
And the Democratic philosophy, old one, not the one as we know from
what we have already done here, was if you write a bigger check,
somehow the problem is going to go away.
I think the king of leadership that the Speaker is providing, and
Steny Hoyer and Blue Dogs and Jim Clyburn and some of the newer members
in the 30-something Working Group is there is a middle way here. There
is a way where we can raise the minimum wage and give small business
tax cuts. We can cut student loan interest rates in half and do stem
cell research. We can repeal corporate welfare that is going to energy
companies who seem to be doing okay, they do not really need our $13
billion, and put that in alternative energy research.
There is a middle way here that we are trying to negotiate that I
think is 21st century government.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You are exactly right, and that is where
the American people are. There are folks out there that are far to this
side of the political and ideological spectrum, and there are people
out there that are far to this side, but you know where the majority of
bread-and-butter Americans lie. They lie in that place where they are
seeking some solutions here that are part of that middle way, a part of
that third way.
In Connecticut, I spent 4 years as the chairman of the Health
Committee. In Connecticut, we have a lot of pharmaceutical companies,
and we found a way to try to mitigate some of the deleterious
influences that that structure imposes on citizens, while trying to
partner with them to do some of the good work that can grow that new
economy.
I disagreed day and night with the pharmaceutical industry when I
tried to get Connecticut to be part of reimporting prescription drugs
from Canada, but you know what, we fought hand in hand, arm in arm,
linked together when we were trying to make Connecticut one of the
first three States to invest in stem cell research because we knew that
our pharmaceutical industry, we knew that our biotech industry were
going to flourish if we helped plant some of the seeds with government
funding because we know in today's economy that venture capitalists are
not terribly interested in funding some of those new biotech ideas,
funding those new baseline pharmaceutical research. So government in
that instance can spend a couple cents to grow a couple private
dollars.
So there is that way to sort of say enough is enough, we are going to
do something about trying to help citizens get some cheaper drugs from
Canada, we are going to talk about trying to use the power of the
Federal Government to negotiate lower prices, but there are so many
places we can cooperate. There are so many places that you as a
pharmaceutical industry, you as an information technology industry can
be part of growing this country.
You know as well as I do that the reason that businesses are still
here in the United States and the reason why businesses come to a high-
cost area like the Northeast is the workforce. We still have the best
trained, most highly educated and, most importantly, most productive
workforce in the Nation. So when we are investing in the minimum wage,
when we are investing in higher education funding, I mean, we are
investing in what is the current and the future of this economy.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree, and there are so many fields that we need
to explore. It is nice to say, well, everyone is going to go to college
and do this and do that, has my boy not done well, but there are a lot
of other things that I think have great dignity and great contributions
to our economy.
By the year 2010, we are going to need 200,000 welders that pay
pretty well, and in my community I met with a vocational school. They
are starting at 13, 14, 15 bucks an hour. People told me a story of a
guy making 30 bucks an hour as a welder with full health care benefits.
So as we pursue this college, we also have to remember the community
college pipeline, the vocational school pipeline for truck drivers and
welders and a lot of these other industries that we continue to figure
out how does this company, as China is expanding, how do we export and
sell them something and grow our employment base here.
So there are a lot of different things that I think we need to talk
about that the approach is so much different from what we are doing
than our friends on the other side.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. If the gentleman would yield for a moment,
a story for you.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A good Irish story.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I like sharing stories, an Irish story
from my Polish mother.
She tells a story about she was going back to school to get some
classes for her degree in teaching. She was getting some classes at the
local community college, and she told this story to me when she came
back from registration.
She was in a line to register for her course, and there were a number
of different lines to register for different courses. About three or
four lines down from her, there was a gentleman who was waiting in line
sort of nervously, thumbing through his pockets, sort of counting the
money in his pockets. He got to the head of the line, and she
[[Page H2027]]
could sort of see what was happening over there and realized that he
was maybe $30, $40 short of the cost of that particular class. He
fumbled through his pockets. A couple of people behind him tried to
help him come up with the money. He did not have it and walked away,
walked out that door.
What my mother said, and I agreed with her, was you can imagine the
courage that it took that young guy who maybe had not been to school in
a very long time, decided this is it, I am going to go back, I am going
to start down that path again, I am going to go to my local community
college, I am going to have the courage to step up and restart my
education, and gets in the line and realizes he does not have the $380
that it costs to get that class. That right there, that could be that
welder. That could be that information technology worker. That could be
somebody using the stepladder of education to become part of this
incredibly productive economy.
Because we still have barriers to increasing your educational
opportunities, to being a more productive member of our workforce, we
handicap ourselves. We handicap ourselves.
And I think of the story of that guy over and over again when I think
about higher education funding, when I think about not only what that
would mean for him personally, but what that means for our economy in
general. Our strength is our workforce, and if we do not start
investing in it, we are going to have even more trouble than we are
competing in this global economy.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. There is no question, and the more you get into
this, the more you see, and again it is not that government is the only
answer, but I will give you an example.
We had today in our Health Appropriations Committee, there is a
tremendous nursing shortage, health care shortage, and there are some
programs that will help nurses with low-interest loans. If you are
going to go into nursing, you get these low-interest loans to try to
get minority and low-income nurses and health care workers into the
field. So there is another program that will go in and try to recruit
and get people in and help them pay for it in order for us to get
nurses and health care workers in the underserved areas.
That program, I think this is the one that was zeroed out by the
President in his budget. Now, does that make any sense at all? We have
a nursing shortage, and we have tremendous health issues for our kids
and poor families that we need. As I said earlier, we have only got 300
million people. We need them all on the field playing against China and
India, that we are not going to make this little bit of investment into
making sure that we get health care workers in underserved areas?
The health care system is already getting skewed to the suburbs where
a lot of these health care systems can make money in the suburbs, and
the level of charity care in the cities are going through the roof.
So it does not make any sense not to make those investments because
the yield that we are going to get is going to be tremendous. Not only
are you getting someone that otherwise would be less productive to be
more productive, they are in a field of nursing. They are going to make
decent bucks, going to pay taxes. Their kids are probably going to go
to college. I mean, this cycle continues.
Let us get it going in a positive way, not dissimilar to what is
happening, like you mentioned, with the college tuition costs. Four
hundred thousand kids in this country qualify and have the grades to go
to college but do not because they feel they cannot afford it or they
can afford it, one or the other, but either way it is an impediment for
400,000 Americans going into college. Now, would that not be great?
These are the kind of issues that I think we need to fix, and to ask
a millionaire to pay a little bit more, I think, is a lot better than
borrowing it from China, which is what we are doing now, and there is a
real decision that we need to make.
We are talking about in our committee about streamlining the SCHIP
program, you know, like when you qualify for free and reduced lunch,
you just sign your name, how many members of your family and what your
income is, and you qualify for free and reduced lunch. Well, we want to
do that for SCHIP so we make sure we are covering all our kids, that
they have health care.
You can argue about the situation of parents and everything else, but
you do not blame the kids for that, and you make sure they have got the
kind of health care that they need. And how do we make sure that my
goal, and I do not know how long this is going to last, but my goal is
to make sure we have nurses and doctors and clinics in some of these
schools. You have some of these schools where 80, 90 percent of the
kids qualify for free and reduced lunch, qualify for SCHIP. Let us put
a clinic in there and tie it to the health care program, tie it to the
wellness program, make sure these kids are getting the kind of
attention that they need, and in all the while, make sure that we
demand as elected leaders and leaders in our community, demand from the
parents to send your kids to school ready to learn, and you as a parent
do your share, too.
This is not a one-way ticket where we are going to do everything, or
the teachers are somehow going to have to do everything, but both
sides. We need to be innovative. We need to create these new ideas and
implement them and reform government and make proper investments in a
balanced way, but the parents and the schools need to also step up, and
the parents especially. The basic fundamental structure of our society
is the family. They need to step up, send their kids ready to learn,
and provide their own personal leadership.
So I yield to my friend for some closing remarks.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, and I do not know how long my
career will last either, but it is starting here in my first 8 weeks in
the House only because me and 100,000 other people in northwestern
Connecticut decided things had to change, there was no choice; that we
could not sit back any longer and let the status quo go on; that we
could not watch the disparity between rich and poor, those doing well
and those struggling to make ends meet, could not watch that get any
worse.
So what this election was about, what this first 100 hours was about,
what everything that comes after that is about is about restoring that
balance. So for all of the challenges that we put before this House
during the time we spend here, for as many charts that paint a gloomy
picture, I mean, there is light on the horizon. The work we have
already done here means something.
You talked about the 400,000 kids that did not go to college because
they could not afford it. Well, if we can get this student loan bill
through the Senate and to the President's desk, that is almost $5,000
in savings. I bet you there is a good percentage of those 400,000
families that if they knew that college ultimately, after they paid
back all their loans, was going to cost $5,000 less, they would make
the choice to go.
Things are happening here which are going to make those concerns of
middle-class families tomorrow with the Employee Free Choice Act and
later as the bills in the 100 hours come through this process, they are
going to make a difference.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree with you. One more, with the SCHIP thing, I
get excited about this stuff because it is really cool, but with the
SCHIP thing you will fill out your form, you do your free and reduced
lunch, you will do your SCHIP deal and also start to get letters from
the Department of Education at third, fourth grade as to what Pell
Grant number you will get as far as how much you will be able to
receive from Pell Grant based on your income. So these kids, this is
the new way of doing things. This is you do not just spend the money.
You change the psychology of the kid and the family.
If a kid in third grade who would never think of going to college
starts getting this Pell Grant, you qualify for $4,000 or $5,000 a year
in a Pell Grant when you go to college, not if, when, you know that
kind of kid all of a sudden is now thinking about college or trade or
something.
{time} 1645
So we are trying to do this all in the same way. And I hope that we
recognize, I think as Nancy Pelosi has, Madam Speaker, that America was
great because we were the ones who wanted to be the best at everything.
So why don't we have the best health
[[Page H2028]]
care? Why don't we have the best education? And let's get down to
business and start doing it.
Any questions for Members who are listening, www.speaker.gov/
30something is our Web site. E-mail is 30SomethingD[email protected].
And I have got to confess, I did not know your mom is Polish. I just
figured you were 100 percent Irish.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It is not a secret, Mr. Ryan. I am very
proud of my Polish heritage. I'm glad that it has come out into the
open this afternoon.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is now public.
And we yield back the balance of our time.
____________________