[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4837-4844]
[From the U.S. 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 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

[[Page 4838]]

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 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.

[[Page 4839]]

  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 afloat. These folks are ready to sit

[[Page 4840]]

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

[[Page 4841]]

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 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

[[Page 4842]]

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 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

[[Page 4843]]

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 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

[[Page 4844]]

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 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.

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