Tim Ryan

Right. If you break it down, Mr. Meek, basically what is happening is we are here in the United States Congress. Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution creates this House of Representatives. Levy taxes. The Republican majority levies…

Www. House Democrats.gov/30something. That is www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. Members of Congress can go to this Web site and access all of the charts, see our third-party validators, and see why we are so alarmed at what is going on…

That is right. Again this is a third-party validator. This is from the Federal Register. Coast Guard estimate to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act, how much money do we need to protect ourselves? $7 billion. What has the…

I think the point was, and we were all campaigning during the initial vote for the war. But I remember making the argument as I was campaigning, as I think a lot of other Democrats were here in the House, instead of going off to war, the…

As we have been saying for a long time in the 30- something group, we have got to try to convince, Madam Speaker, the Republican majority to start putting the country before their own political party, and I think we would be okay. The Web…

Iran, all the nuclear issues, all the conflict and controversy, we are borrowing money from them to finance the Republican spending spree that is rewarding their wealthy contributors.

I said Iran and I also said Iraq. I also said UAE, which has been in the news lately. But I just wanted to clarify for you.

Okay. That is what we have borrowed from them. Iran, Iraq, Libya, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bahrain, Ecuador, Oman, Venezuela, Qatar, Nigeria, Kuwait, Indonesia.

I just want to let the Members know according to the Department of Treasury, again, third-party validator, the OPEC designation includes those countries, what is it, $65 billion?

I would like to thank Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It is good to have you back. Mr. Meek, congratulations again for being elected to chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. You are such a young member. Congratulations for getting…

Like you said, what is our benefit? We get to fund our deficit and that is about it. We do not go belly up. But what is our benefit? We do not have more money to invest in education as Ms. Wasserman Schultz pointed out. We do not have more…

We heard from the President during the State of the Union address a bunch of fuzzy math, but we are going to balance the budget by 2009.

Find a positive way to explain that. Our friends on the other side who say we are always being negative. Figure out, if they can explain to us a positive way of saying that this country is being sold off to other countries piece by piece…

That is a great point. We will get criticism levied at us from the majority, saying how dare the 30-Somethings go out there night after night, sometimes 2 hours a night, and all they are is critical. Wait a minute. Are you asking us to…

And for our friends in the business community, it is like having a board of directors or having shareholders. If the people running the business are not doing the job, Mr. Meek, then the board of directors may have to make a decision…

How many times do we hear from our friends on the Republican side that government needs to run like a business, it needs to be flexible and this and that? This is an atrocity. This business would be bankrupt if you ran it the way we are…

And I just want to say to the gentleman, one, how much I agree with you. And two is we are not saying that government is the only answer in many situations. It is not. In many situations it needs to get out of the way. Maybe it does need…

And a lot of what they were trying to say, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, was how were we to know. We found out they did know. They were warned. And then not only were they warned, but they were spread out all over the country saying our…

Well, that has really been the problem here. And I thank the gentleman, and I want to congratulate you, as your partner down here at the 30-somethings, for your recent election to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation as their…

Just this morning, today, Thursday. One of the things OMB and the White House are emphasizing this year is this great new agency rating system that they have put together with ratings from effective to ineffective. Okay? And they looked at…

And you may like this one because this totally reaffirms what you just said. It affirms it, but then it even reaffirms it. At the House Budget Committee hearing this morning, the committee hearing was on discretionary spending.

We need corn, I love corn; but these are folks that are not just aligned with us philosophically. This is a very pragmatic approach to how to keep America competitive, and I think our plan is much better than the plan or lack of plan that…

The Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. We ask the Members to send us something if they have any comments about what we have been talking about.

As soon as possible. This particular letter was sent December 29 to Senator McConnell. Dear Senator McConnell: The administration now projects that the statutory debt limit, currently $8.184 trillion, will be reached in mid February of…

And we talk about getting our children prepared to become engineers and scientists in part of our innovation agenda. Just what we pay every day on the debt could enroll almost 61,000 children in Head Start for an entire year. We are…