[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 12, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H5466-H5472]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE 30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Dahlkemper). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) 
is recognized for half the time until midnight.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity, and 
it's always a pleasure to follow my good friend from northeast Ohio 
(Mr. LaTourette), who is not only a good advocate, I think, for his 
congressional district but also a very good friend and a fellow Lebron 
James fan. So we want to congratulate the Cavaliers, and I want to 
thank Mr. LaTourette.
  Madam Speaker, we are representing the 30-Something Group here 
tonight, a group that was started several years ago by then Minority 
Leader Nancy Pelosi when the Democrats were in the minority, and we 
were talking about issues that were facing the men and women of this 
country in their thirties and began to frame some of the Republican 
agenda at that point as it affected the 30-somethings and also used it 
as an opportunity to talk about the young people in this country, how 
the decisions that were being made by then--the then Bush 
administration would not only have a short-term effect on the young 
people of our country but also have long-term consequences. And 
unfortunately today, Madam Speaker, we are dealing with many of those 
consequences that were laid at the plate of now President Obama, laid 
at the plate of the now Democratic Congress and, quite frankly, laid at 
the plate of the American people.
  So as we speak here tonight, and I will be joined later by 
Congressman Boccieri and Congressman Altmire, we're going to discuss 
where we are today in our country and in our congressional districts 
and also some of the approaches that we need to make over the course of 
the next several months and over the course of the next several years.
  I represent a district, Madam Speaker, that is just south of Mr. 
LaTourette's district. I represent Akron, Youngstown, Warren, Niles, 
and the Mahoning Valley. And over the course of the last several months 
and over the course of the last year, for example, in Trumbull County, 
our unemployment rate has doubled. And this has not been just a short-
term problem; this has been a 30-year problem that our communities have 
been dealing with. And if you look and you see what has happened in 
communities like ours where companies, longtime companies in this 
country like Delphi, like General Motors, steel mills like WCI are near 
closure. We have Delphi retirees who are both salaried and union who 
are now joining together to figure out what they're going to do with 
their families, what they're going to do with their kids, their house 
payment, their mortgages, their college tuition that they have to pay, 
their daughters' weddings that they have to pay for, over the course of 
the next several weeks, months, and years. So, Madam Speaker, we need a 
strong agenda here in Congress and a strong agenda coming from the 
President as to what exactly we are going to be able to do.
  Madam Speaker, the President has approached this, I think, in a very 
comprehensive way, and the Congress and Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid 
have approached this in a very comprehensive way. We are trying to 
address this on all fronts. We are dealing with a credit crisis. We are 
dealing with a manufacturing crisis. We are dealing with a foreclosure 
crisis. We are dealing with home equity problems.

[[Page H5467]]

We are dealing with lost wages. We are dealing with all of these issues 
all at the same time. So, Madam Speaker, we see the President of the 
United States has taken a comprehensive approach, and I think it's been 
a good one.
  Now, on the backs of 8 years of the Bush administration, some people 
say, you know, we shouldn't go back and we shouldn't talk about the 
past, that we should just move on. But we are getting criticized on our 
side of the aisle for the decisions that we have made based on the 
problems that were left for us to deal with, and the criticism is 
coming from the same group of people who put us in the exact same 
position that we are in and then criticize the solutions that we are 
presenting because those solutions in some way may be different than 
the philosophies that got us to where we are. So tonight, Madam 
Speaker, we are going to talk about some of those solutions.
  Now, recently in Congress we have done a couple of different things. 
We have passed the supplemental appropriations bill to deal with some 
of the defense concerns. But I think more importantly one of the things 
that we have done, one of the first things that President Obama pushed 
for over the course of the first few days in office and between the 
time he got elected to the time he got sworn in, is the American 
Recovery and Reinvestment Act. So, Madam Speaker, although the 
supplemental is not passed and signed into law, it is on its way and it 
does reflect, I think, the priorities of not only this administration 
but the priorities of the Congress.
  So let's look at how things are different. Over the 8 years of the 
Bush administration, we saw the wealthiest in our country get tax cuts. 
We saw the wealthiest in our country, the top 1 percent, gain all of 
the income. And it's interesting if you look, and I think it goes back 
to 1990, and it may be 1980, but I think it was 1990, since 1990 where 
80 percent of the income growth went to the top 10 percent of the 
people in this country.

                              {time}  2210

  And since 2000, 90 percent of all income growth went to the top 10 
percent of the people in this country. And that means that the middle 
class has been squeezed. So they are not getting the income growth, 
their energy costs are going up, gas was $4 a gallon, health care costs 
were going up by 15 percent. The Congress and the President both, both 
controlled by the Republican Party, had a very laissez faire attitude, 
not only for the economy, but for everything, that the government had 
no role, and it should be parsed off and given to the highest bidder.
  And that's what happened in the war in Iraq, that's what happened 
with health care. And I think it's important for us to remember as we 
are dealing in these difficult economic times, as tensions are being 
wiped out, as 401(k)s are being halved, that it was the Republican 
Party who stood on this floor and wanted to privatize Social Security.
  The only thing that many people have left is Social Security. And can 
you imagine if our friends on the other side had the opportunity to 
take the Social Security system and put it into the stock market, where 
this country would be. Imagine where our retirees would be, imagine 
where our grandparents would be, imagine where our parents would be, 
and imagine where this country would be if we had to bail out the 
Social Security system in this country.
  And so when we are receiving criticism for what we are trying to do, 
I think it's important for the American people to remember the big 
picture and to remember how we got here and to remember that there are 
two different governing philosophies in this country. And one of the 
philosophies, as sad as it is to say, Madam Speaker, got us to the 
position we are in. And we are going to move on, and we are going to 
talk about our response to this.
  But it is critical for everyone to recognize and everyone to know 
that the Republican, conservative, extreme right-wing agenda was 
implemented in the United States of America. From the year 2000 to the 
year 2006, they controlled every branch of government: the House, the 
Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court. Many of the State 
legislatures, like the ones that Congressman Boccieri and I come from 
in Ohio, all were controlled by Republicans.
  So they implemented their agenda. They implemented Chicago-style 
economics. They implemented the shock doctrine. They implemented 
supply-side economics. And, today, because of a lack of regulation, 
because Wall Street was run like the wild, wild west, because there 
were no cops on the beat, here we are today, billions of dollars in 
debt, borrowing the money from China, a middle class getting squeezed, 
energy costs going up, increased reliance on the Middle East for our 
energy, health care costs going up, insurance companies hiring more 
people and knocking more people off the rolls, any kind of income 
growth in our country going to the top 10 percent of our people, where 
everybody else is left behind, school funding problems all over the 
country, mental health issues, soldiers coming back with PTSD not 
getting the proper treatment. Walter Reed was falling apart, and on and 
on and on. So the issues that President Obama is dealing with today and 
the Democratic Congress were issues that were laid on this table left 
for us to try to deal with.
  And so President Obama came with a plan, a stimulus plan, because 
there was a $3 trillion hole, gap in our economy. And all the 
economists were telling us that we had to somehow fill this hole or we 
would have a continual slide for our country.
  And so President Obama, his economists, John McCain's economists, on 
both sides of the aisle, we are in agreement that we needed to do 
something. We needed a stimulus package.
  And the stimulus package was going to be something different that 
Washington hadn't seen for a long, long time. This stimulus package was 
going to go to the middle class. It was going to go for those programs 
that were going to lift people up, where the middle class would be able 
to spend money and fill this hole. We were going to invest in 
education. We were going to invest in energy research. We were going to 
fund NIH, National Institutes of Health, so that we could increase 
cancer research.
  And now all over the country we have Relay for Lives, all over the 
country, my congressional district, and I am sure yours, where 
thousands and thousands and thousands of people are walking for a day, 
at night and through the night for 24 hours straight to raise money for 
cancer research. It was President Obama's stimulus package that 
increased funding for cancer research, because it was a national 
priority. And we can talk about a lot of the different investments in 
the research and into energy research, weatherization, tax cuts for 95 
percent of the American people.
  But I just want to talk for a second about the investments that he 
made in education. Because there is no greater investment we could make 
in this country than to invest in the young people in our country and 
to make sure that they get the kind of education that they need, that 
they deserve, because they are the next leaders that will be in this 
body. They are the next teachers. They are the next astronauts, the 
next scientists that are going to keep America strong in the future.
  And so the difference in priorities from the last administration to 
President Obama can be summed up, and there are a lot of different 
examples, but I think they could be summed up in this, a $2,500 
opportunity tax credit to go to college, where the same parents that we 
had, growing up, middle class, northeast Ohio, Italian, were working 
hard to send their kids to school, and that was the number one 
priority. And President Obama recognizes that and makes sure that that 
tax credit was in this stimulus bill.
  And he made sure that there was an increase in the Pell Grant so that 
people could get grant money to go to school and then stood up at that 
podium and challenged the American people, all of us, to go one more 
year to school and contribute, that it was in the national interest for 
that to happen. This is a much different approach than President Bush 
saying after 9/11 the greatest thing you can do for this country is to 
go shopping. That is a tremendous difference in leadership styles, and, 
I think, approaches.
  And I think the focus on education, as we will continue to talk about 
it through the next hour, I think is something that is very critical. I 
think this is the first time we have shared the

[[Page H5468]]

floor together. Congressman Boccieri and I started our careers 
together, I want to say a long time ago, but it wasn't that long ago.
  So I yield to my friend.
  Mr. BOCCIERI. Congressman Ryan, thank you for allowing me to be a 
part of this discussion, and the zeal and the passion that you display 
on this House floor I remember watching a few years ago when I was 
serving in the legislature. Congressman Ryan and I both came up through 
the legislature in Ohio, and he cut his teeth earlier in the Congress.
  And it's an honor to be here with you today. Because we do share the 
same vision about what it's going to take to move our State and, more 
importantly, our country forward. And Congressman Ryan and I have 
similar backgrounds. I hail from a working-class family. My 
grandparents were coal miners, carpenters and steel workers. My parents 
were one of the first in their families to go to college, respectively, 
and two successful brothers, one is a pharmacist and a chemist, and the 
other is working in the military and working in the defense industry.

                              {time}  2220

  I can tell you that my family is not unlike thousands, perhaps 
millions across this country, Congressman Ryan, who worked hard, played 
by the rules, punched the time clock, went to work every day, carried 
that lunch pail, because they believed in America, they believed in the 
spirit of America; that when you work hard, you play by the rules, you 
give back to your country and your community, that America is a place 
where your hopes and dreams and desires can be fulfilled.
  More than ever, we find that that dream of that American spirit is 
being challenged--challenged by some of the decisions of previous 
administrations, challenged by the fact that we have got to put our own 
house in order and move our country forward and invest in things that 
really matter--invest in our greatest asset, which is our people. And, 
as Congressman Ryan has so eloquently said many, many times on this 
House floor, that we have an opportunity to change the direction of 
this country and move it in a direction and trajectory that is going to 
be about prosperity and sharing the ideals and values that brought my 
grandparents from a country so far away to settle here on the shores of 
America because they believed in this experiment in democracy, and that 
was where hopes and dreams could be realized.
  Now I tell you this because in the spirit of our discussion tonight 
we're going to talk about some of our problems, but we're going to talk 
about solutions, more importantly.
  We're going to talk about the fact that Ohio has been hemorrhaging 
with manufacturing job loss. In fact, in 2008 alone, the United States 
itself lost 149,000 manufacturing jobs, and many of those jobs, as 
Congressman Ryan had said, were from Ohio.
  Ohio is a place where we built things. We helped build America. Some 
of the great thinkers of our country hailed from Ohio--innovators like 
Thomas Edison and a variety of astronauts like John Glenn. We had 
success stories across the board because we had such diversity.
  He comes from an Irish and Slovak background. And I have great 
respect for the Irish because I married one. But I have to tell you 
that Ohio is not unlike many States in the heartland of America that 
have experienced such job loss, such movement of manufacturer's jobs 
out of this country--and because of some of the policies that we have 
enacted here in Congress.
  Now you have spoken often and loudly about the fact that we need a 
manufacturing policy in this country that protects jobs, that protects 
innovators, and that protects people who want to build and start their 
own business. But what we have seen is a whole host of failed policies 
that have allowed our jobs to move overseas.
  Now I tell the American people here tonight that America cannot 
sustain itself by being movers of wealth. We have to produce wealth in 
this country. We have to build things--like we have always done.
  And I heard on some of our district work periods about, Why are we 
giving loans to the automotive industry? Well, let's be clear about 
this. Are we going to depend on Fiat to build our tanks and weapons 
that we need to defend this country if we were ever attacked? Are we 
going to depend on some other foreign-owned or foreign-born company to 
produce the things that we're going to need to defend our country?
  It is important that we maintain the Big Three, not only as a matter 
of our economic security, but our national security. And the supply 
lines that go into the Big Three through Ohio and into Michigan and 
from Pennsylvania, the heartland of our country, we have got to be the 
producers of wealth, not just the movers of wealth. And that is why 
this Congress moved to protect and defend American jobs and American 
security, Congressman Ryan. And I was proud to support some of those 
initiatives because we cannot tolerate policy that is going to make our 
country weaker.
  I hear oftentimes that if we could only just be like countries like 
China, or just be like countries like India. Now as an Air Force air 
crew and pilot, I have been over the world. It only takes one trip 
outside the borders of our country to understand how good we have it. 
We have a robust economy. We have a workforce that works hard. It is 
unmatched and unparalleled in the rest of the world, in my opinion. And 
we have a country that sustained itself throughout generations because 
we invested in our people--our greatest asset.
  But when we allow jobs to pack up and move overseas, when we allow a 
little bit of who we are--the identity that has created America--to 
slip away by allowing those jobs, and those manufacturing jobs in 
particular to leave our country, we are making America weaker and not 
stronger.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOCCIERI. Absolutely.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think coming from our area--and you can go to 
Wisconsin, you can go to Indiana, you can go to Pennsylvania--you can 
go all throughout the industrial Midwest and you read statistics that 
say, Hey, for every manufacturing job, there are five spinoff jobs, and 
for every service job, there's two spinoff jobs.
  So if you go to get a massage, you have the masseuse and then you 
have somebody that's going to wash your feet and put a warm towel 
around your neck or clean the towels. If you have a manufacturing job 
where you're working in a car plant, you have the suppliers of that and 
the people around the one manufacturing job that support it.
  I read this a lot in economics classes and everything else, but it 
hit me a few months ago when we lost a third and then a second shift at 
a General Motors plant in Lordstown, because they said that the second 
shift was going to go, and then about a couple of days later the local 
seat manufacturer--the second shift was maybe 800 or 900 people.
  A couple days later, the seat manufacturer laid off a couple hundred. 
Then, a couple days later, the logistics company that did all the 
logistics for coming in and out of the General Motors plant laid off 
another hundred people. Just the spinoff.
  So when we say we need to make things in the United States, it's 
important to recognize the ripple effect. Ross Perot said in the early 
campaign in the early nineties, You can't run an economy on back rubs. 
You just can't do it.
  That's something that I think we're staring right in the eye. If you 
look at the history of the world with the Dutch and the Spaniards and 
the Brits, when 20 to 25 percent of their GDP became finance, that was 
the beginning of the end for those countries. Because, like you said 
when you first started, all you start doing is moving money around. 
You're not making anything. You're not adding value to a product. And 
you start these Ponzi schemes like we just ended up having here in the 
United States.
  So I think it's important that we do focus on this manufacturing 
policy.
  I yield back.
  Mr. BOCCIERI. The gentleman from Ohio could not be more correct in 
his assertion that we have got to focus on producing things in this 
country. I don't know about you, Congressman Ryan, but I have heard you 
speak many times, eloquently at that, because we cannot have this race 
to the bottom.
  I hear many people say, If we were just like China, like India, in 
terms of--our standard of living is much

[[Page H5469]]

higher than countries like China and India. Why would we ever want to 
have a race to the bottom? Let's embolden them and bring them up so we 
can have an equal transfer of goods and services and products that are 
going to make both of our countries stronger. That's what we need to 
enact in trade policies right here on this floor and make sure that our 
trade policies are in concert with making a manufacturing sector of our 
economy robust.
  I don't know if you know this, but two-thirds of our outsourced jobs 
in the United States have come from our manufacturing sector. Two-
thirds. Two-thirds.
  We're in a dangerous position right now with respect to what we're 
doing with our military-industrial complex. We cannot continue to allow 
those manufacturing jobs to leave our country if we don't protect and 
defend the economic security and the national security of our country 
by producing things right here. I know that you have fought hard for a 
policy that emboldens.
  You know, Ohio has been bleeding factory jobs. More than 257,000 
factory positions have evaporated since the beginning of 2000; 257,000 
families have been handed pink slips and notices that their jobs are 
going to be leaving the country. I think that we have got to do a 
better job, Congressman Ryan.
  I want to work with you on this House floor to come up with real 
solutions; tangible solutions that are going to protect our workers and 
protect our national security.
  I know that you and I have been championing many of the things that 
are going to make our country stronger--research and development tax 
credits, making sure that we do research here in America.
  When I was in the State legislature with you, we talked about the 
fact that for every $1 that the State of Ohio spends, we can leverage 
$10 from the Federal Government to help spur innovation and 
entrepreneurialship and the intuitiveness that's going to help create 
and produce the minds that are going to produce the cures to cancer. 
They're going to produce the new energy sectors for our economy in 
years to come. It's this type of research, it's this type of investment 
that is going to make our country stronger.

                              {time}  2230

  Now I'm a freshman Congressman. You've been here for several terms. 
When I was going through my orientation this year at the John F. 
Kennedy School of Public Policy, they were telling us that only 16 
percent of what we spend in this country is for investment back into 
the country, 16 percent.
  Now our 16 percent is much larger than most countries because of our 
economic prowess. But at the end of the day, 16 percent is far too 
little to sustain us for years to come.
  I know you've championed that at your local universities, and I'm 
going to talk about some of mine.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, we need it I think from the perspective of 
investing in research and development, but I want to go back to the 
point you were making about the defense industrial base that we have.
  Right outside your district and in my district is Goodyear. Goodyear 
is the last American tire manufacturer in the United States, and 
there's a huge movement within the city of Akron, within Summit County, 
State of Ohio, Federal officials to keep Goodyear's headquarters in 
Akron.
  One of the problems is--and Goodyear is actually doing fairly well 
now--trying to get Goodyear, the only American tire manufacturer, to be 
a supplier of military tires. I mean, it's like you've got to beg 
people at the Pentagon to have Goodyear supply. It's hard to get them 
as a second source sometimes, to back up Michelin, who is a French 
company.
  Now I was against the war. I thought it was one of the worst 
geopolitical decisions in the history of our country, and we are going 
to pay for it for many, many years to come.
  But when our country goes to war, you'd better be able to supply our 
own military. And we are getting dangerously close to losing our 
defense industrial base in this country. It's tires. And we have the 
same issue with RTI, a titanium company in our region, both in your 
district and in mine. There used to be 10 titanium companies in the 
United States. Now there's two, and one of them is in Niles in 
Weathersfield Township and one of them is in Canton I think.
  And the problem is, there's an amendment called the Berry amendment, 
which says the military has to buy their specialty metals from American 
companies. But there's a waiver, and there's this process that always 
gets waived. So the RTIs of the world have to struggle to get military 
spending to go to their companies.
  So it went from 10 titanium companies to two.
  We're getting dangerously close to not being able to supply our own 
military because the titanium comes from Russia, our tires are coming 
from France. This is getting dangerous here.
  We've got to be very, very careful with that. And I think part of it 
is the investment, what we did in the stimulus package with 
transportation, infrastructure, research to rebuild the country in 
many, many ways.
  But if we don't have that defense industrial base, it's going to put 
us in a real predicament to try to supply our own military.
  I yield back to my friend.
  Mr. BOCCIERI. Congressman Ryan, you bring up several valid points. 
And the question is--and I'm sure the American people out there 
listening to us tonight, our 30-something group here, they're asking, 
So what do we do? What can we do to make certain that we are the 
producers of wealth and not just the movers of wealth?
  Well, you and I have championed legislation that is going to invest 
directly, as I said earlier, into our greatest asset.
  When we center our centers of excellence and pin them down with 
research and development, our universities and the great research that 
we're doing in Ohio is tremendous.
  I mean, in my district alone, the Rolls-Royce company is actually 
researching fuel cell technology at Stark State Community College. We 
also have the EPO Group that's researching plug-in hybrids. And at the 
Ohio State Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wayne County, 
they're actually researching anaerobic digesters to use as energy, 
compressed natural gas. They are actually selling this gas back to the 
grid. This is the type of research that we need to champion and hone 
around our centers of excellence.
  Not only are we going to use taxpayer dollars to create the next 
innovators and the great thinkers from Ohio, but we're going to help 
create a sustainable industry around these different types of 
investments.
  If we invest in our greatest asset, our people, we can help spur the 
innovation that has helped put Ohio on the map.
  I'm going to read a list here of some of the great innovators that 
have come from our State. Charles Kettering who was the inventor of the 
first electronic starter motor ignition system. Jim Spangler invented 
the portable electronic vacuum cleaner. And we all know about Thomas 
Alva Edison who was a prolific inventor and certainly helped with the 
incandescent lightbulb. Lester Pelton invented a type of free-jet water 
turbine and was from Vermilion.
  These are the type of innovators that if we invest in our higher 
education, in our institutions of higher learning, Congressman Ryan, 
we're going to have the next viable industry. And hopefully that will 
be a green energy industry that will blanket northeast Ohio.
  From Cleveland to Canton, from Canton to Youngstown, we have a 
triangle of success, and we have the opportunity to invest in things 
that are going to put our State forward.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you look at the difference between the past 
philosophy that got us here where if you cut taxes for the top 1 
percent and hope they maybe invest into whatever it is that they invest 
in, and it hopefully will trickle down to the middle class, cut 
research funding, fail to invest into higher education, fail to invest 
into research, fail to invest into health care research, health care 
technology, you get what we've got. And you end up where we are.
  But if you look at the dramatic change in the stimulus package--and 
we can go through the whole thing. For example, increases in NIH and 
all the different energy research, weatherization to try to create 
markets for all these new alternative energy projects,

[[Page H5470]]

$7.2 billion to increase broadband access in usage to unserved and 
underserved areas of the Nation, which will better position us for 
economic growth so that all of our kids, not just the ones that happen 
to be in a nice school district where there's a good property tax base, 
and they have good schools and good jobs, but all our kids can have 
access to the Internet, and all communities could access broadband, and 
all hospitals could be plugged into this.
  If you look at the billion dollars for prevention and wellness 
programs, $10 billion to conduct biomedical research for cancer, 
Alzheimer's, heart disease, stem cells, to improve NIH facilities, if 
you have a family member who has cancer, Alzheimer's, MS, Lou Gehrig's 
disease, ALS--they're on the Hill today--this President and this 
Congress are backing you up.
  We're saying, this is a priority. Your family members being sick and 
the government not putting in the proper resources to do the investment 
is wrong.
  President Obama came in and said, We're going to put science back on 
the table, and 70 to 80 percent of the American people agree.
  And that creates jobs at the Cleveland Clinic, at the University of 
Pittsburgh Medical Center, in the Stark County hospitals, Summit County 
hospitals, hospitals in Youngstown, all of the information technology 
to make sure that our doctors and nurses and health care technicians 
aren't making mistakes so that people who go to the hospital don't get 
hurt because of miscommunications.
  This President and this Congress are saying, We've got your back. 
We're going to make these investments. You can't have a strong country 
and just wish and hope it may happen.
  There are very strategic investments that were made in the stimulus 
package. And I love some of these people saying, Yeah, but it's one-
time money. Well, how about no-time money? No-time money means a bunch 
of teachers get laid off. That's what no-time money means. And in our 
State, some of the Republicans are telling Governor Strickland, you 
know, this is one-time money. What are you going to do next year? Well, 
we've got to deal with this year.

                              {time}  2240

  And we are plugging holes, and we are making sure we are not laying 
people off, at least as many as we can, prevent as many layoffs as we 
can. And we have infrastructure money that President Obama made sure 
was included in here, $2 billion in grant funding for the manufacturing 
of advanced batteries.
  We are now ceding the battery industry to China. President Obama, 
Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, the Democratic caucuses, probably 
70 percent of the American people thinks that is probably a pretty bad 
idea. So we can sit here and say, Oh, my God, the Chinese are taking--
we are going to have all these new cars, plug-ins, and the battery is 
going to be made in China. And we will be sitting here, Congressman, 
10, 20 years from now, how are they going to let that happen? We are 
saying put money into helping companies and universities research this 
stuff so we can make it in Youngstown, Ohio, we can make it in Canton, 
Ohio. That is the goal here. And we cannot wish this to happen, and 
there are difficult decisions that need to be made.
  Leadership is lonely, and you've got to make some difficult 
decisions. But I love the fact that President Obama is coming up and 
saying, This is what we have got to do. The American people elected me, 
and this is what I talked about, and this is what we are doing. And in 
4 years, I will run again on that record. But let's not sit around and 
hope good things may happen and our friends on the other side vote 
against everything.
  They borrowed more money from China. President Bush and the 
Republican Congress, Madam Speaker, borrowed more money from China and 
from foreign interests than all the other Presidents and Congresses 
before them combined. They lay this on the table, and we have got to 
borrow some money to make sure that the economy doesn't completely 
collapse, and all of a sudden we are the bad guys.
  These investments that we are making are critical: Head Start, Early 
Start, child care development, block grants, supplemental nutrition 
assistance programs so that our kids can eat, community health centers 
so that people who can't access health care now can go and get some 
preventive care before they end up in the emergency room costing 
everybody billions of dollars.
  So these are very strategic investments. These aren't things that we 
just picked out of the air to throw money at to just say we are doing 
something. We are going to look back on this time, and we are going to 
thank President Obama. And we are going to thank the Democratic 
Congress for making these investments because they will pay great, 
great dividends for thousands in the long run.
  Mr. BOCCIERI. Congressman Ryan, you can't be more correct. Can you 
imagine a novel idea, that this Congress is taking bold action to 
actually invest in America, to invest in our country, our people, our 
way of life? Can you imagine? How arrogant can some be who suggest that 
we should not do this for our people, that we should not take their 
money and invest back in our country? We are going to be judged by two 
measures. We are going to be judged by two measures in this great 
recession we find ourselves in, by action or inaction. And Congressman 
Ryan, when I was going through the orientation courses of the freshman 
Members, they told us that if we sat on our hands and watched thousands 
of jobs evaporate, more factories pack up and go overseas, that we 
would see unemployment in the first quarter of 2010 perhaps as high as 
18 percent. Eighteen percent.
  So we have to take action. We have to have movement. And to invest in 
the things that are going to make our country stronger is not only 
prudent, it is necessary. After years and years of rebuilding a country 
that I had so many visits to, we were building roads and bridges in 
Iraq, building brand new hospitals and schools in Iraq, making sure 
that every man, woman and child in Iraq had universal health care 
coverage, how dare us think about the American people for once here? 
How dare us think about the American people? And all we hear is stiff 
arms and noes and enough is enough, and this country has got to be put 
back at the tier that we need to put and we need to set in this 
Congress, and that is by investing in the things that were in this 
recovery package.
  Now imagine this, the Democratic Congress of the United States House 
of Representatives that is controlled by the Democrats now obviously 
enacted the largest tax reduction in our Nation's history and the 
largest investment in capital in our Nation's history to make our 
country stronger, to make our country and our people stronger. I think 
that spells scores of success stories and future innovators that have 
helped Ohio become the great State that she is. But we can make a 
difference by investing and putting the parameters out there, putting 
the goalposts, putting the out-of-bounds markers for our market to act 
in a way that is responsible to its people, that is responsible to its 
people, and to help us forge a way on the path toward prosperity. That 
is what this Congress has done in just a few short months.

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you look at what all these investments are, 
infrastructure and science, $120 billion. Now I think you hit the nail 
on the head. We are at $1 trillion that we have spent in Iraq. One 
trillion. Now, I don't know about how anyone else feels, and I don't 
think I'm actually going out on a limb here to say we have a lot of 
projects in our communities that could use a little bit of that money.
  Sewer overflow. My goodness gracious, these cities that are dealing 
with combined sewer overflow issues is in the hundreds of millions of 
dollars. Sewer lines, septic tanks that need to be cleaned up and sewer 
lines put in, water lines, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, health 
care for our citizens, these are basic investments that our country 
needs to be making. And this stimulus package is a step in that 
direction.
  And when you look at it, I mentioned the broadband, if you look at 
$27.5 billion for highway construction, $16.5 billion to modernize 
Federal and public infrastructure to save energy costs in the long run, 
$19 billion for clean water, flood control, environmental restoration 
investments, $17.7 billion

[[Page H5471]]

for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption, 
these are all programs and investments to help reduce our dependency on 
foreign oil so we are not in this morass that we get involved in and 
all these little political situations that we get in because we have to 
pull oil out of some of these countries to run our country.
  Thirty billion dollars to transform the Nation's energy transmission 
distribution and production systems so we can have a smart grid. Those 
are good investments. Five billion dollars to weatherize modest income 
homes. These are investments that we need to make.
  Lower health care costs, education, helping workers. Twenty billion 
dollars to increase the food stamp benefit by over 13 percent. Look at 
what the Democrats have done even when we got in and had to fight to 
get a couple of these things done.
  We raised the minimum wage for the first time since 1997 when 
Democrats got in and basically had to jam it down the White House's 
throat in order to get it signed into law. The largest increase in 
veterans' spending in the 77-year history of the VA, and we had a lot 
of people running around this town in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, 
who is more patriotic? And it was all red, white and blue when the 
lights were on and cutting the veterans' health care budget and 
benefits in the back room.
  And when we got in, the largest increase in the 77-year history of 
the VA. And you see it again with our budget this year. You saw it in 
the 2009 budget that President Obama signed. You are going to see it 
again now. You saw it in the supplemental, which we can go over some of 
the investments that were made. But this is a commitment to our 
Nation's veterans who served this country so well. Again, an investment 
in our people. You serve our country, you will be rewarded. Four years 
of free education if you served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Benefits have 
increased. We reduced and got rid of a lot of the fees and assessments 
that were put on by the other side. These are steps.
  Have we done enough? Not even close. I'm not here to say, and I don't 
think anyone else is, to say that we have been in for however long, 
110, 112, 114 days, whatever, and things are great now. They are not.
  And before you came in, I stated the economic distress of the 17th 
Congressional District, but these are steps in the right direction. 
These are steps that are lifting up people that need help. This is not 
a handout, but a little bit of help along the way to where they can get 
themselves back on their feet and this economy can get moving again, 
and then these green jobs, the investments in science, investments in 
infrastructure, rail and all of these things we are talking about, 
Rolls Royce, which they are doing in your district which is phenomenal, 
these are the kinds of things that will grow. But they take some seed 
corn. They take a little water, a little fertilizer, and the government 
now, I think, is responsible for doing a lot of that.

                              {time}  2250

  So we are making these investments. We will continue to make these 
investments, and we will continue to, I think, strategically invest the 
taxpayers' money prudently, judiciously invest the money.
  Mr. BOCCIERI. I have to tell you, Congressman Ryan, after being in 
the Air Force 15 years and flying our wounded soldiers in and out of 
Baghdad, and whether we agree with this war or not, we have to give 
every degree of respect to the men and women who serve in uniform 
because they fought in Iraq and Afghanistan only because our country 
asked them to. As far as I am concerned, when they come back, when 
their boots hit the ground here in America, they should not have one 
hospital bill, any expenses that are required to go to college, get a 
degree and advance themselves. We should be investing in them and 
rewarding them for the sacrifice that they have made for our country.
  Let me tell you about a soldier who was in my State legislative 
district when I was serving in the State House. He was injured with an 
IED and will be disfigured for the rest of his life. A piece of 
shrapnel hit him in the jaw, and he had surgeries at Walter Reed to try 
to put his face back together. After he was discharged with a Purple 
Heart, a Bronze Star and let go back into the civilian world. Two weeks 
after discharge from the military, his jaw broke again. This 22-year-
old soldier with a young child had $15,000 in medical expenses that he 
couldn't weed through the VA to get paid to make sure that he could put 
bread on the table for his family.
  A soldier like that who almost gave everything for this country 
should not have to pay for his bills for injuries that he sustained 
while overseas. It took swift action by this Congress in the last 2 
years to make certain that our soldiers were not forgotten.
  And the Wounded Warriors Program that we have right now that 
acknowledges the sacrifice, the great sacrifice of those men and women, 
we cannot forget and we should never forget. As long as I am a 
Congressman and have the ability to speak publicly about this, we will 
champion those soldiers and tell them what we are doing to put their 
lives back in order and to invest in them.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I have been listening to what the two Ohio Members have 
been saying. To put this in perspective for our colleagues and for the 
American people, I would like to talk with regard to the stimulus and 
the budget. People talk about the fact that we are running up a 
tremendous deficit this year, $1.8 trillion. It is an inconceivable 
amount for a 1-year deficit. We are reducing the deficit over the 
course of 5 years by two-thirds, from 12 percent of GDP to 3 percent of 
GDP. People in my district when I tell that story will say that is 
great, but you need to do more. Why can't we do more? Why is that a 
great feat that we have cut it by two-thirds? Going to what the 
gentleman said with the VA, let's look at the budget that we have 
control over, what is the discretionary control that we have.
  If you look at $3.5 trillion in budget, the entire Federal budget for 
this year that we passed, most of that Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid, interest on the national debt, Federal employee pensions, 
veterans retirement benefits and pensions, those are mandatory 
accounts. That money goes out without Congress having year-to-year 
control over that amount.
  So what Congress actually has control over, the discretionary 
account, is about $1 trillion; $1.1 trillion. It is a very high amount 
of money, but compared to $3.5 trillion, not nearly enough to make a 
dent in that deficit that we are talking about.
  Now, half of that trillion dollars that Congress has control over is 
defense. Nobody thinks we should cut defense. We increase spending for 
defense by 4 percent. It is what we need to do to keep us safe and 
secure. We all agree, Republican and Democrat, that is what we need to 
do. So you take that $530 billion out of the equation, and you are left 
with about $500 billion. Now, that is what we have discretionary 
control over. That is the post office, that is scientific and medical 
research, that is the national parks, that's student loans. That is our 
embassies overseas. That is Federal law enforcement, border security, 
FBI, CIA. And as the gentleman talks about, that is the VA hospitals in 
this country, funding for veterans health care. That is keeping the 
lights on at every Federal building in the country. That is our Federal 
roads and highways. That is everything that the Federal Government 
does. When you think about the Federal Government on an annual basis, 
that is what we have discretionary control over.
  If we were to say, you know what, American people, people in our 
district, the Fourth Congressional District of Pennsylvania, the people 
in Ohio, we are so committed to deficit reduction and we are so 
committed to cutting the budget this year, we are going to shut down 
the government. We are going to shut down everything that we have 
discretionary control over this year. We are not going to deliver the 
mail this year. We are going to lay off every Federal employee in the 
country for 1 year. We are not going to do student loans and Federal 
law enforcement. We are going to close every Federal office building in 
the country, no scientific research, no national parks, close our 
embassies overseas, bring everybody back home, shut down the Congress 
and the White House, everything that we have control over. If we did 
that for 1 year, we would cut the Federal deficit for this year

[[Page H5472]]

from $1.8 trillion to $1.3 trillion. That's how deep a hole we are in.

  So when I say to the gentleman from Ohio, Madam Speaker, that we cut 
the deficit by two-thirds over 5 years, a 1.9 percent growth over a 4-
year period, the slowest projected growth rate in the history of the 
country, that is a monumental achievement. And we do it all while 
preserving our commitment to our Nation's veterans, as the gentleman 
talks about, making sure every veterans hospital in this country is 
adequately funded, and that every veteran in this country has access to 
the highest quality health care available anywhere in the world. We 
preserve that commitment while we do the best job we can at reducing 
the deficit that this President inherited, because we are not starting 
from zero. I think everybody realizes that. And it is pointless to talk 
about the past and to point fingers, but it is instructive to take a 
look at how we got here, why we are here, and the fact that we have 
very difficult decisions to make moving forward.
  The only way we are going to bring down these costs and bring down 
the deficit and bring down the debt is by making the difficult choices, 
and that is what this Congress is going to continue to do.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think the other point there with the stimulus is 
because credit locked up, that clearly shut down, and still is, we are 
still getting calls in our office that people still can't get loans. So 
the TARP money and all of this other help that we have given to the 
banks has not yet kicked in. If there was not even the stimulus 
package, imagine what the economy would be doing, if there wasn't a 
little bit of money in everybody's paycheck. I ran into an operating 
engineer the other day who was finally getting himself back to work 
because of some road projects that were happening. All over Ohio, the 
Governor just made a tour around the State with different 
infrastructure projects that he was spreading around from the stimulus 
money. So we are filling this gap. There would be a complete shutdown.
  And, yes, we are taking some of this money and, yes, we are borrowing 
money to make investments now. But imagine the tax loss we would have 
in this country if we weren't making any investments. And who knows 
what the yield will be from the investments we are making into energy 
and the NIH for the Cancer Institute.
  I mean, what is the value in the long term of reducing the cost of 
cancer to our health care system, of Alzheimer's to our health care 
system? What benefits will stem cell research yield for our country in 
terms of health care? How many accidents will be prevented because of 
better communication with the investments into the health care 
information technology?
  These are things that you can't put a price on. And it is the old 
saying, some people know the price of everything and the value of 
nothing. And you can't always pinpoint what piece of research yielded 
the best benefits because all of this research tends to build onto 
itself.

                              {time}  2300

  And we are making these investments now, and we are going to find out 
in the long run that these were good decisions that we made, courageous 
decisions that the President has made.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. BOCCIERI. Let's make no question that we want to show, and I am a 
30-something here on the floor of the House of Representatives telling 
you and the American people that we will recover. We will recover. We 
will grow out of this recession, and we will be stronger for it at the 
end of the day.
  And for those who suggest that we are spending a lot of money in this 
great recession that we find ourselves in, the worst economic downturn 
since the Great Depression, in 1946 when the United States came out of 
the Great Depression and World War II, the government was spending more 
and borrowing more than the economy could produce, spending more and 
borrowing more than the economy could produce as a percentage of GDP 
and what the government debt was. Right now we are at about 50 percent 
of what the economy can produce.
  And once we start growing this economy again, investing in the things 
that are going to make our country and our people stronger, we will see 
the difference. We will see the investments realized. We will see the 
tangible results coming back to us as we have a stronger workforce, a 
workforce that can critically think, multitask, problem solve, and be 
competitive with the Indias and Chinas of the world that have already 
begun investing in their workforce.
  And I will tell you that the gentleman from Ohio is correct in his 
assumption that by making these strategic investments in our country, 
in our people, and in our way of life, we're going to be the producers 
of wealth once again, not just the movers of wealth. Investing in green 
energy, investing in the things that are going to transform our economy 
so that we have diversity. Can you imagine rolling into the gas station 
one day and having a choice between using traditional gasoline, 
biomass, ethanol, maybe even plug in our electric hybrid, or drive by 
the gas station altogether because we have a fuel cell that was 
researched right here in the 16th Congressional District of Ohio that 
allows you to get 100 miles to a gallon? Can you imagine how that would 
be transformational for our economy? These investments that we have in 
the American recovery package and the stimulus package are going to be 
what are going to make the difference and transcend our economy for 
years to come. And I say that in confidence as a 30-something.
  And I want you to know that these challenges that confront all of us 
as leaders are not Democrat or Republican challenges but American 
challenges, and we will recover with prudent investment.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit 
about what we are doing locally here in the last minute between 
Congressman Boccieri's district in Canton and my district in Akron to 
Youngstown and also Cleveland, all the way over to Congressman 
Altmire's district over in the Pittsburgh area, creating a technology 
belt in which all of the health care and green energy and the legacy 
manufacturing that we have in this area can help stimulate this mega-
region from Cleveland to Akron, Canton, through Youngstown, Warren, 
over into Pittsburgh, to try to plug into all of this because if areas 
like ours aren't benefiting from these investments, then really it's 
all for naught. It's the heartland of our country.
  So with that I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I want 
to thank the gentleman from Ohio.

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