Tim Ryan: “Both of you have made one overarching point, and that is that the government is broken. The government is not working…”

“Both of you have made one overarching point, and that is that the government is broken. The government is not working the way it was meant to work. We have no leadership in Washington, D.C., from the Republican House, to the Republican Senate, to the Republican White House, that is willing to take on the gigantic task of reforming this government. It is nothing but status quo. It is nothing but the same old tired ideas that get recycled election cycle after election cycle, with no real solutions. Whether you are talking about energy costs, or you are talking about the war in Iraq, or you are talking about Katrina, we have a broken government and nobody in Washington, D.C., with the guts to try to fix it. Now, when you look at our foreign policy, and it has been mentioned already here, $8.8 billion given to Iraqi ministers by the coalition provisional authority and nobody knows where it is; $45 billion of American taxpayer dollars spent in Iraq on reconstruction, $96 million in cash and receipts remain unaccounted for a specific project, on and on and on. Why is it broke? Why is the American government broke? Because we are not having any success in rehabilitating the Iraqi economy. Oil production below pre-war levels, electricity is below pre-war levels, 54 percent of Iraqi households lack access to clean water. On and on and on. But the main line is this, that this country needs to go in a new direction. The American people are tired.”