[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4963-4965]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Perry). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Ryan) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be 
here. We are re-establishing the 30-Something Working Group, which some 
may remember. Many--it seems like many years ago, Congressman Kendrick 
Meek and I and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz came to this 
floor in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 2006, and we were talking about 
issues of the day and how they applied to people in their thirties or 
people in their twenties, and tried to take, at that point, some of 
President Bush's policies and make them understandable to young people 
in our society.
  And so we had many conversations, many late night conversations here 
on this House floor, sometimes an hour a night, sometimes 2 hours a 
night, sometimes 3, 4, 5 hours a week, coming to help deliver the 
message. And at that time, back in 2004 and 2005 and 2006--and let me 
just take a second to thank all the staff that was here for those late 
hours, for always being around for us, and some are still here today, 
as we are still here today. But today, we want to re-establish this.
  Back then it was the privatization of Social Security, Mr. Speaker. 
And President Bush wanted to take the Social Security program and 
privatize it, put it in the stock market and allow that to be a part of 
the private investment system and not the insurance system that we have 
with regard to Social Security. And fortunately, we were able, through 
the leadership of Minority Leader Pelosi, at that time, before she was 
Speaker, encouraged us to go out and do this, and we were able, with 
her leadership, the 30-Something Group and other Members going out 
across the country, we were able to put a stop to the privatization of 
Social Security.
  And fast forward just a few years, to 2008, 2009, I think there were 
a lot of Americans who were very happy that we did not, at that time, 
have the Social Security program in the stock market. Many people would 
have lost their retirements.
  So today, we have a whole new set of challenges, and we have a new 
crop of very talented, young Members of Congress, members of the 
Democratic Caucus, who want to come to the floor and talk about the 
issues of the day as they pertain to young people and people who have 
been around a little bit, and how some of these proposals that are 
coming from the Republican Conference, the Republican Study Committee, 
the Republican Budget Committee, how some of these policies will hit 
the ground.
  In my opinion, we seem to be governing by bumper sticker. So we want 
smaller government, we want less of this and less of that, and more of 
this and more of that, that can be phrased to sound really good on a 
bumper sticker to where you would drive by and you would look at the 
bumper sticker and you'd think, it makes a lot of sense.
  But what we want to do with this working group and the folks who will 
be joining me here tonight and over the next several weeks and months 
is to say, how does this hit the ground? How does the Republican budget 
hit the ground?
  How does it affect you? How does it affect your family? How does it 
affect your mom and dad? How does it affect your grandma and grandpa? 
And that's what we would like to talk about here today.
  I think, and say this, knowing that many of the folks on the other 
side of the aisle are friends of mine, dear friends, good friends. Some 
I like to hang out with, some I don't get an opportunity to hang out 
with, but are all good people trying to do good things.
  But why we need to come here and have this debate and discussion and 
conversation is that we need to figure out how we're going to move 
forward as a country. And our arguments on our side are that the 
Republican budget, the Republican approach, the Republican philosophy 
has caused a lot of the problems that we have in our economy today. The 
financial deregulation, looking the other way while Wall Street turned 
into a crap game, without any regulation at all, no cops on the beat 
keeping an eye on things.
  We saw two wars put on a credit card, Afghanistan and Iraq, no 
taxpayer, no citizen, other than the families of the military, were 
asked to make any sacrifice at all, and funding for the two wars was 
put on a credit card. And then you throw in a prescription drug bill 
that was not paid for on the credit card.
  So this is what happened from 2000 to 2008, where we were running up 
the deficit, running up the national debt. And here we arrived in 2009, 
after having to save the banks and do the TARP program in order to plug 
this trillions of dollars of a hole in our economy to make sure that 
the banks don't lock up and not loan money and everything else, so we 
had to go to the taxpayer, and the taxpayer had to foot the bill for 
the two wars, the prescription drug bill, and the massive deregulation 
of the financial markets, the too-big-to-fail, and then they failed. 
And so the taxpayer was asked to foot the bill.
  What we are saying here on our side is that that's the wrong 
approach. Cutting taxes for the wealthiest in our society, this is not 
to punish the wealthy, this is--our approach is not to punish anybody, 
but what we're saying is, when the income for the top 1 percent goes up 
over the last 10, 15, 20 years so dramatically that the average CEO is 
making 300-plus times what the average worker is making, when you have 
the rich people that are making hundreds of millions of dollars, the 
top 1 percent, but then you also have the top .1 percent of the 
Americans who are making massive amounts of money, hedge funds and 
whatnot.

[[Page 4964]]



                              {time}  1730

  What we're saying is, when you have that imbalance and that level of 
inequality or it becomes a threat to the democratic way of life, that's 
the democracy piece, but we also have the economic piece. When you get 
a high concentration of wealth, then the average person doesn't have 
the amount of money in their pocket to be able to go out and spend in 
the economy.
  So this is a supply side argument, cut taxes for the wealthy, this 
approach that our friends on the other side, the Republican Party, the 
Tea Party, has been pitching since 1980: cut taxes for the rich and 
hopefully something positive will happen for the middle class.
  Democrats are saying we've got to invest in the middle class. We've 
got to help the middle class with health care costs, with the cost of 
going to school and going to college, getting a trade, going to a 
community college, helping poor school districts, making sure that 
families who send their kids to college and take out a student loan, 
that those loan repayment rates are reasonable. Those are the reforms 
we made as Democrats here while the Democrats were in charge of the 
Chamber in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, and those are the investments we 
made.
  We're talking about two separate philosophies. One philosophy on the 
Republican Tea Party side is to cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulate 
Wall Street, and look the other way while there's a crap game going on 
on Wall Street; have two wars, one of them very questionable in why it 
started in the first place, and a prescription drug bill that all went 
on the credit card.
  So cut taxes, start two wars, and put a prescription drug bill on the 
credit card, drive up the debt, deregulate the financial markets until 
the taxpayer has to come in and bail out and the economy collapses, 
that's what happened. And so we don't really have to have the argument. 
Those are the facts of a Republican Presidency, House, and Senate that 
got to implement their tax package. They got to implement their 
financial regulatory packages. They got to pass budgets that did or did 
not make certain investments. And what happened is, after a decade of 
that philosophy being implemented, the economy collapsed. It was not 
just a normal recession, it was a financial recession, which a lot of 
economists now are telling us how difficult and how much longer it 
takes to get out of these financial recessions.
  So the discussion that we've had in the last Presidential election 
and the discussion that we want to have here in this Chamber as to what 
philosophy should prevail in the United States of House of 
Representatives, the body that is most directly elected--the Federal 
piece, anyway--most directly elected, every 2 years, by the people of 
this country, what philosophy shall we take? And the Democrats are 
offering, under the leadership of Leader Pelosi, a different world 
view, a world view that says we make investments in the infrastructure, 
we make investments in education, we make sure that we have a fair Tax 
Code that is simpler and fairer, that it doesn't take forever to fill 
out your taxes. Keep it simple. And at the same time, we ask those 
people who have benefited so much over the last decade or two, whose 
income went up and they now make 300-plus times what the average worker 
makes, that they help pay their fair share and help us pay for the 
debts that the Republican Party has incurred by putting two wars on a 
credit card and a prescription drug bill.
  So that's the discussion. That's what we want to do. And the 
President and the Democrats have made these investments. And if you 
think that things like only paying a certain percentage of your income 
back for your student loan is what is part of your philosophy, then you 
fall in our camp on that issue. If you think that the CEO that's making 
300 times more, or $300 for every dollar the person on the factory 
floor is making, needs to be balanced out, maybe they need to help us 
pay down the debt more and shouldn't have all kinds of tax loopholes, 
then you're going to side with what the Democrats want to do.
  So long story short, we are now in a position where we can talk about 
the Republican budget. And we all are in agreement, I think, Democrats 
and Republicans, that budgets are documents that represent our values. 
And we all are in agreement that we need to take care of our long-term 
debt. We need to reduce our deficits. It is an issue, and one that we 
all need to take very seriously.
  Now, the Republican plan is presented to the American people, and it 
is taking needed investments and cutting them so deeply that we are 
going to get leapfrogged by China and India and Europe in some of the 
coming industries. These cuts, in order to try to balance the budget in 
a short period of time, are going to be pushed off. The burden of these 
cuts will be on the middle class--education, economic development, 
which are the kind of investments that we need to make. Also, these 
cuts are going to be cut out of programs that help the poorest among 
us, and that is not a recipe for success.
  We have 300-plus million people in the United States. We are 
competing against India and China on who's going to determine who's 
going to shape the future of the global economy. Is it going to be the 
United States? Is it going to be China? Is it going to be India? Is it 
going to be Europe? That's the question. Who's going to shape this 
future? And America has always had a recipe, from post-World War II 
until roughly in the 1980s, where we made investments in 
infrastructure, we made investments in research and development, we 
made investments in education, because we knew that those were public 
investments that would yield huge benefits for the United States of 
America.
  And now we have a Republican philosophy that says those investments 
are a waste of money and that any investment that the government makes 
must be a bad one; that the space program, that the research 
investments that we make, that making sure that school is affordable, 
the public-private partnerships that lead to new developments, the 
research that no one company will make must be made by the public. 
Those are quality investments that help build our economy for a 
generation, whether it was post-World War II with the GI Bill and we 
take all of these soldiers and we make sure that they can go to 
college, we make sure they can go to law school, we make sure that they 
can go to medical school, we make sure they can become engineers.

                              {time}  1740

  Or the space program, in which public money, with private ingenuity 
and know-how, came together. That investment in the space program led 
to a booming economy in the high-tech sector, the other public 
investments that led to the Internet and satellites and all of these 
other things, and private companies come in and benefit from that and 
then invest in a workforce that can take those technologies and make 
them better and increase productivity so that we have a strong middle 
class.
  Invest in our infrastructure, make sure that we rebuild our country. 
We've got combined sewer systems, we've got roads, we've got bridges 
that need done. We need to make sure that we invest in the smart power 
grids so that we can get alternative energy pumped into our grids, so 
that we can have a more conservative approach to how we expend energy, 
a smarter approach because of a smart grid where we're wasting less 
energy. These are the kind of investments that we need to make, and all 
the while protecting what's happening and what may happen if the 
Republican budget would be signed into law.
  The dramatic cuts in the Medicare program, asking those going into 
their senior years to not have a guaranteed benefit that they paid 
into. Many of those folks who would be hurt by the program, the 
Republican budget program, would be women, many of them older women. 
Fifty-five percent of the Medicare population--women. The oldest 
Medicare beneficiaries, 85 and over, 70 percent of those are women. So 
as we age, women will see those cuts.

[[Page 4965]]

  We have proposals from the other side about abolishing Planned 
Parenthood, about saying that Planned Parenthood does not serve women 
well. It's many, many women who get basic health care from Planned 
Parenthood--screenings, birth control, family planning, all done 
through Planned Parenthood. The other side wants to abolish it, defund 
it completely.
  These are some basic things that we need to do in order to protect 
the middle class.
  So here we are, in the next few weeks and months, we're going to have 
a discussion about where this country goes and where the House of 
Representatives goes and what's our philosophy. So we will be coming 
here week after week after week to compare this philosophy, the 
philosophy of cut taxes for the top 1 percent, to keep the Tax Code 
very complicated so the wealthiest benefit from it, or Democratic 
philosophies and Democratic proposals that say we want a fairer Tax 
Code, we want a simpler Tax Code, and we want a Tax Code that doesn't 
have so many loopholes that only if you have high-powered accountants 
will you be able to take advantage of the Tax Code.
  The Tax Code should benefit middle class families. We all need to 
contribute, but it shouldn't be so complicated that if you have a lot 
of money or you're a big corporation you're somehow going to get out of 
paying taxes or you're somehow going to be able to hide your taxes 
overseas and not pay your fair share. That's one group's philosophy 
versus ours.
  We are saying that, yes, we need to balance the budget, but we want 
to do it like President Clinton did it and the Democrats did it in 
1993. We want to do it in a fair way that continues to make investments 
in those essential investments that will lead to long-term economic 
growth.
  One of the things we're doing in Youngstown, in my congressional 
district, is a program that President Obama had to put together 
administratively--that we want to push for more of these--public-
private partnerships and innovative institutes. The innovation 
institute that we have now in Youngstown is in additive manufacturing, 
three-dimensional printing, the cutting edge of manufacturing, the 
cutting edge of additive manufacturing, partnering with big companies 
like Lockheed and Boeing and other smaller companies in the Mahoning 
Valley. But public money from the Department of Defense or Department 
of Energy, the Department of Commerce, public-private partnerships to 
help position America--not just our region--in the next generation of 
additive manufacturing help drive the cost down for these printers so 
that everyone that has a desktop computer now can have a desktop 
printer that prints products that could revolutionize health care, 
revolutionize energy, revolutionize manufacturing in the defense 
industry. But this is a public-private partnership.
  What we cannot do is say, ``Oh, my God, that's government money; it's 
got to be bad,'' these investments that we make for the poor in the 
Medicaid program so we can make sure that these kids have basic health 
care in the United States of America.
  And, yes, we do need education reform; yes, we do need innovation 
within the health care system. We've got a long way to go, even with 
the health care reform bill and how we can revolutionize health care, 
how we can revolutionize education, how we can revolutionize the way we 
take care of our veterans. I will be back on this floor talking about 
some of those ways that we can go about doing that.
  But the issue I have with the Republican proposals are they're all 
about the budget. Listen, we all know we have a demographic problem--we 
all know we have the baby boomers moving into the Social Security and 
the Medicare system--but how are we going to drive down Medicare costs? 
How are we going to drive down health care costs? That's the question. 
That's what's important. Of course we need to bring the cost down of 
health care, but you just don't say, well, we're not going to have any 
reforms, the free market is somehow going to take care of it and it 
should be pushed off on the backs of the citizens. That's not going to 
work. That's not humane. There is a better way to go about it, when you 
look at the field of integrative health care, for example, how you can 
help prevent a lot of issues from arising that make people sick.
  When you look at 70 or 75 percent of health care costs are caused by 
things that are behavioral in nature, so how do we shift the health 
care system to even more prevention like we tried to do in the health 
care reform bill? How do we make investments into areas in medical 
schools and hospitals that are looking into driving down health care 
costs in these other ways? Not just talk about, oh, we're going to have 
draconian cuts to the Medicare program and then we're going to push it 
all off on the Medicare recipient to foot the bill and we're going to 
give them a voucher.
  Ladies and gentlemen, that is what happens with this Republican Tea 
Party budget. You will get a voucher, Mr. Speaker. These folks will get 
a voucher. My friends on the other side say, well, yeah, but that 
voucher will help you pay for it. The problem is the voucher that the 
seniors will get doesn't go up, doesn't rise with the cost of health 
care. So the voucher only goes up a small bit while health care costs 
have been going up four, five, six, seven, depending on the plan, more 
percent. So you get a voucher today and it's worth $100 and your health 
care bill is $150, but next year your voucher is worth $102 and health 
care costs are $170. That happens every single year. That voucher 
becomes worthless at some point. The cost will be pushed off onto 
seniors. They're going to have to come out of pocket. Their kids are 
going to have to help them.
  You see these huge cuts in the Medicaid program, which in many States 
help senior citizens get into a nursing home and pay for a nursing 
home.

                              {time}  1750

  So the middle class, again, people 40, 50, 60 years old who have 
parents in a nursing home, are going to have to come out of pocket. 
That's bad for the economy, less consumer demand.
  All of these things fit together. We're going to come back and 
continue to talk about many of these issues over the course of the next 
few weeks and months and compare. As I said at the beginning, I've got 
a lot of Republican friends in this Chamber, I've got a lot of 
Republican friends in my congressional district, but I also have a lot 
of Republican friends in my congressional district that would disagree 
with the approach of the disinvestment in the United States that's 
coming from the other side.
  Mr. Speaker, I look forward to coming back in the next week and 
months, and I'm sure you're excited for that, too.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________