Pat Ryan: “I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak here. I just want to say, I have been in…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak here. I just want to say, I have been in Congress now 20 years, and I have known Mr. Larson for that long. He has been an absolute bulldog on this issue. I think he understands better than most the impact of this program, just consistently, year in and year out, getting this on the radar screen. Now, we are going to have a markup next week on this, really proposing this at a time of great need. The pandemic that we all have experienced over the last few years, and the global economic collapse that we saw in the last couple of years, I think pulled the veil back on a lot of problems that we have had in this country. We could go through the entire list, but I think one of them that is most significant is how many people in this country, how many seniors in this country, struggle to make ends meet, in the wealthiest country on God's green Earth, the most significant, most dynamic economy. We have a handful of people building their own space stations, going into space, and, God bless, that can only happen in America. But the reality is that the vast majority of people in this country are still struggling.…”