30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I guess if we were on the other side, Mr. Speaker, I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is, Why are they trying to distract? What are they distracting us from? And I think when you look at what is happening and why the Democrats want to take the country into a new direction, all you have to do is look around. And I know, Mr. Meek, and you know, Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, there are a lot of Republicans, when we start saying this stuff, they have got to turn their TV off, they can't listen to it because I think it rings true.

The bottom line is this, the neoconservative Republican agenda has been implemented into the United States, period. And look around, here is what it looks like: Iraq, Afghanistan, gas prices, health care prices, tuition costs, minimum wage. Look around. Deficits, who are you borrowing it from? That is the neoconservative agenda. It is here. And we need to take the country in another direction. So they obviously don't want to talk about it.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And just those few steps that we can take in the first week that we are here, talk about taking the country in a new direction. Imagine if we raised the minimum wage that first day, imagine we cut the student loan interest rates in half saving students and parents $4,000 or $5,000 over the life of the loan, the negotiation by the Secretary of Health and Human Services with the pharmaceutical companies, the money we would be able to save the government just in those three steps. We are not talking about brain surgery here. We are talking about basic fundamental commonsense moves that will benefit everyone, commonsense moves for the common good. And I think moving the country in a new direction is what we need to do.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is the same old song, we don't need a minimum wage increase. Things are going just fine. The President said the economy is doing great and it is benefiting all Americans. Well, he hasn't been to my district, and I am sure he has not been to a lot of districts around the country where people are struggling.

I found it interesting, over the 4th of July break where we do a lot of parades, and doing a parade is like taking a poll in your district as to how people feel. They will shout at you exactly what they are thinking. As you are going down and shaking hands and meeting people, you hear about the gas prices and the lack of vision; you hear about the trailers sitting in Hope, Arkansas. And you hear about the $9 billion being lost in Iraq. This is what average Americans are talking about.

And then the kicker is when the Republican Congress pushes a pay raise for themselves, but not a pay raise for the American people. Give me a break. They raise the salary for Members of Congress, but at the same time not at least tie it to minimum wage and say the American people need to be a part of this, too? Come on. What is going on?

No matter what issue you are talking about, and this is the thread that ties all of this together, the Republican majority is incapable of executing government as stated by our friend, Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Speaker, he said, ``They are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.'' He, the former Speaker of the House, the father of the Republican revolution, is now calling the leadership and the Republican Members of Congress ``they'' and also saying that they are in charge of a government that can't function.

Whether you are talking about negotiating down the drug prices or the $9 billion in Iraq, or FEMA, or any other issue, I think time and time again they are seen as being incapable of being able to execute government.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Look, the retirement package, Lee Raymond, CEO of Exxon, $398 million retirement package. He gets a $2 million tax break. So it is bad enough you are already subsidizing his business to the tune of $14 or $15 billion.

And this is the kind of disparity, we have the highest disparity between the wealthiest people in the country and the poorest people in the country since the 1920s, that is going like this. And the whole idea is to try to lift all the boats up into the middle class.

And we were talking earlier about the economy. This is, again, third-party validator, as we begin to wrap up. The long term, because we get a lot of happy talk, but the long-term outlook is such a deep well of sorrow that I can't get much happiness out of this year. That's a former director of the Congressional Budget Office that used to work for President Bush. It is such a deep well of sorrow.

This country is going in the wrong direction, whether you are talking about oil or Medicare or the war or Katrina or whatever, and my friend has got his toy there. This country is going in the wrong direction and we want to go in another direction.

If you like the neoconservative agenda that has been implemented, look around, gas, oil, retirements, pensions, minimum wage, Social Security, college tuition, keep the Republicans in office.

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