Report of 30-Something Cacus

REPORT OF 30-SOMETHING CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - May 04, 2004)

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida and the gentlewoman gentlewoman from California for bringing up these issues. I just recently moved up into the 30-Something. I was in the 29 something caucus all by myself before we started here.

A couple of issues. I missed the beginning of the special order here, but I have three universities in my district. I have a
local campus, branch campus of one of those universities, and I think the one issue that I faced being in the State Senate in Ohio with tuition increases going up by 10, 15 percent across the board, is that the one issue that young kids and young students could sniff out more than anything else is when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes, when someone is trying to tell them one thing and do something else. And the last presidential election, the students, the college students, the technical students, of this country were promised by the President of the United States that he was going to raise the Pell grant award to $5,100 for all freshmen students. Now today the maximum Pell grants is still $4,050.

So we try to engage young students, we try to engage young people into the process, and we try to tell them that we care about their needs. But here once again in 2000 they were told one thing by a typical politician, as they would see it and they would call it, who would promise one thing and then something else happened. They did not deliver on the promise. And, again, I heard the gentleman from Florida reiterate, as has been reiterated many times here in this Chamber, that again we have the priorities for the top 1 percent. They are the people that we care about. We garner all the energy of this Chamber to help the top 1 percent. But we cannot make one move to help college students. And as he said, I am sure in Florida it is the same way as it is in Ohio: 10 percent this year, 10 percent next year, 13 percent the next year, 15 percent the next year for college education.

And these are the States that are getting hardest hit by the job loss. So they lose their job or they are underemployed; so they go from a job making 15 or 20 bucks an hour with health insurance down to 9 bucks an hour. Now they are at Sam's Club, now they are at Super-K, now they are at Kohl's or Bed, Bath & Beyond, trying to make ends meet for their family, and they have a 15 percent tuition increase to try to make ends meet for their kids.

So I am glad that the leader has also organized this. This is a great opportunity, I think, for us to try to address some of
the issues here in the United States Congress and let people know out there, let young students know out there on a Tuesday night at nine o'clock, as they are flipping through watching Comedy Central or MTV or VH1, that they could maybe tune in here once a week, and they do not have to do it every night, but once a week find out there are Members of the United States Congress that are trying to address some of their needs.

I know we have some other speakers. I would be happy to stick around and talk a little bit.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, that is right. If the gentleman would yield further, I would say to the young students who may be watching this or may hear about this through their college newspapers, that they can check the statistics. We are not going to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and try to lie to you. We are going to present to you statistics we have had verified, information we have had verified from members of our staffs and different organizations.

Check it out. It is not us saying it. It is not a Democrat or Republican issue. Unfortunately, the Congress has been controlled by the Republicans for a good many years, the White House has been in the hands of the Republicans for now 3 ½ years, and the Senate has been in Republican hands for a few years now. If they wanted to address the needs of college students in the United States of America, they had the opportunity.

Time and time again, we took the opportunity to engage the top 1 or 2 percent, to make sure they got hundreds of thousands of dollars back in some instances. So this is a priority issue for this Congress; and if you do not believe us, go right ahead and check our facts, just the facts.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I want to thank the gentleman, because the 30-somethings are always looking for some support from the 50-somethings, without a doubt. But I think the gentleman raised a couple of very good points.

The one point is, let us think about a young student today who may be just finishing up high school, or a sophomore or junior in high school, getting ready to go, or maybe a kid 10 or 12 years old. What kind of student loan burden are they going to have? If the colleges, public universities go 10 percent, 10 percent, 10 percent, 10 percent over the next 4 or 5 years, Pell grants are not adjusted for inflation, the same problems with the student loans, we tack on more user fees and everything else, and then the debt from the tax cuts. So by the time they get through law school, if they are 15 now, by the time they are 27, 28, 30 years old, they have all of that educational burden. Then they have the burden that we are putting on them from the past 2 or 3 years here.

Where is the economic machine going to move at that point when you have so much debt? We are really putting chains not only on our kids, but on the economy. That is one point I would like to make.

The other point I thought of is that not only are we strapping ourselves

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The great investment of the GI Bill, which sprang our economy into the world domination we now have. I look at my grandparents' generation, who many accessed the GI Bill, doctors, lawyers and engineers.
The space program, it was not just about going to the Moon; it was about getting mathematicians and scientists and engineers and physicists. They were not all going to work for NASA, but they went out into the private sector and drove this economy forward throughout the '50s, '60s, and '70s when we had a lot of success. We need to make those investments again.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is right. I think a lot of people out there listening now who are young students who may not be tuning in tonight but, may be in the future, I do not think if you cross-reference the stories of those of us who are standing here, probably many of the Members here, the stories would be much different.

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You work hard, you go to college, you get a summer job, you work in a steel mill in the summer, you cut grass in the summer, you do what you can to help move things along, and you hope that you are blessed with families who help you, parents who support you, grandparents who want to step in and support you to make sure that you can have what you have. That is becoming less and less available.

I think part of the reason I am here is because I was blessed to have a family who was able to help me out. I was blessed to have a summer job. Kids today are not even going to be able to get a summer job, because the market is so terrible that people who have been unemployed for the last 7 or 8 months are taking the summer jobs FROM the college kids, so that job I got cutting grass at Trumbull County and I would drive the thing on the side of the highway and drop the arm down to cut grass to make 6 bucks an hour so you would have money in the summer so you were not a further burden, those jobs are not available. The summer employment working the steel mill on the midnight shift, those jobs are not available because no one is hiring.

So there is a connection to all of this. It is not just about the student loans, it is about the economy, it is about the tax decisions that we are making here, it is about the money we are spending, it is about the deficits, it is about the irresponsible fiscal policies that we have here that are all, that are all affecting this for all students and people who are going to get a 2-year degree, or do not even go to school at all. They are still affected by the job market.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I would like to see the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) pull his wallet out again.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, my son's birthday was yesterday and I pulled the wallet out. I have been married 12 ½ years and someone asked me for a 20 and I said, I have not seen one in 12 years. So I ended up opening my wallet and somehow gifts and things, and I am here and I am waiting for the end of the month.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, one issue before we get into the books, I want to talk about the GI Bill. I do not know how many stories, if this is anecdotal or what, but I have heard a lot over my lifetime about people who are in the greatest generation and they are telling the story of their life and they say, well, and then I went to medical school, or well, and then I went to become a lawyer. And I would always ask, well, why? And they said, well, I did not know what I was going to do and the GI Bill was going to pay for it, so I went.

Now, how many kids are out there right now who, if we gave them that opportunity, they would say, I do not know what to do, I have a bachelor's degree in political science, I know I cannot make a very good living off that. What are you going to do? I am going to go to law school, I am going to go to medical school, I am going to go do something that is important.

But I think one issue that we do want to touch on before we leave here is to talk a little bit about textbooks. And nothing, nothing in my educational career got me more hot under the collar than when I had to return a textbook that I paid, or my mother or my grandparents paid $120 for, and you bring it back at the end of the semester, and they will give you 5 bucks, 10 bucks back for it.

So we have a piece of legislation here, just to shout out to all of the college students, we did not forget you. We know this is a major issue, we know this is a major problem.

There are textbooks that are sold in the United States that are sold for half the price in England. So the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. Wu), a Member of Congress here, has a bill that we are kind of jumping on that is going to ask the General Accounting Office to investigate these high prices of college textbooks and the disparity of prices between textbooks sold in the United States and overseas. There is no way a textbook sold in the United States, written in the United States, published in the United States, copyrighted in the United States should be $100, and they are sold at a bookstore in England or in London for $50. There is no reason why that should happen. So we want to do an investigation. We want to see why that is.

We are also on the brink, and I think we dropped it last week, of having a piece of legislation that would give parents or students a $1,000 tax credit for the price of college books. That should cover a good portion of the books that people
spend in a year.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Maybe one of these weeks we could talk about No Child Left Behind. And I do not want to get
into a K through 12 debate now, but it is the same issue. In Ohio, for example, the State legislature did a study, No Child Left Behind underfunded by $1.4 billion. So now that means that the State, in order to fulfill their obligations to the Federal mandate, must come up with more money. Does that mean they will take more from the college subsidies for higher education that the State puts on? Does that mean more of an increase to the property tax of someone who is paying property tax in the State of Ohio? Where will we get this money?

I guess the thing I want to communicate is that this is doable. The beautiful thing about this democracy is that it
belongs to us. And if young people want to participate in this system and in an election from Republican to Democrat, then they can do it. There are enough students out there to make this happen.

If you want the millionaires' tax cuts to go away or not necessarily even go away, just a portion of it going away to pay for this, that is doable. If you get active and you get involved, let us know, 30somethingdems@mail.Ðhouse.gov.
Let us know what your ideas are. We need young people to participate in this process and replenish this system because it has become very stagnant down here. It has become a very small group of people who raise money, dump it into this institution, get the legislation they want. That legislation helps them make more money and they take their profits and it is a cycle that goes on and on. And the only thing that combats that is democracy and young people getting involved in the process.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you are a young student sitting at home right now, watching this or hearing about these policies, what would you rather have? That is that democracy. It is that simple. What would you rather have, tax cuts? A millionaire getting $130,000 back or a program like this where you will get a credit for your textbooks; you will get "I Have a Dream Scholarships" for your community service; help the States to make sure that they do not cut back; tax credits; increase in the Pell grants. What do you want?

If you are a student and you want certain things, then you have to get out and participate in the system.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. As we close here tonight, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) and also the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sánchez) for their assistance and help here today.

We ask American people to continue to tune in and communicate with us. I want to commend the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) for putting this together. We thank the Speaker for the opportunity to address the House and the American people tonight.

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