fairness, who is asking for justice and responsibility and policemen policing wall street and the regulatory markets. and who is not. >> there are other items that were included in presidents manufacturing agenda. you listed off some of them as we were talking here. again, on the reality front, what can get through congress of what he proposed? >> well, i would hope some of the manufacturing policies could get promoted. because i think there is a genuine consensus when the cameras are off that these things can get done. when we -- and a good example of is i have a china currency bill that i've been pushing for eight years now. before the democrats left congress, speaker pelosi brought to it the floor. i think we had 370 votes. it was probably the largest bipartisan vote of a substantive issue we had in that congress. and the republicans currently now won't even bring it up for a vote. you're talking about 370 members of the united states congress

agreeing on something. that's a good day. now they won't even bring it up for a vote because they're getting their strings pulled by some of the multinationals. my point is i think there is some genuine concern for manufacturing in the united states and bringing it back. and i hope that we can pick one or two of these things, maybe with tax incentives for retrofitting trucks and buss for natural gas because of the marcellus shale boom going on in pennsylvania and ohio and others, that would be a good place to start where maybe we can find some common ground. >> phone calls. tony is a democrat in pennsylvania. you're on the air with tim ryan of ohio. >> caller: governor, greta. governor, mr. ryan. >> good morning. >> caller: an example of something i wanted to bring up rather than a question. an 80-year-old woman, you know, on social security, she has to buy a pair of tweezers, say. she goes to the store. there is an american-made pair for $1.49 that is going to last

30 years. and then there is, you know, a cheap pair from china, 99 cents. i think most people understand why she buys the 99 cent pair. but just to pose that against a hypothetical billionaire from new york who owns hotels throughout new york city and atlantic city, and he is buying furniture for his hotels that he flies the american flag outside of. the bid comes in from china 20% lower than the u.s. manufacturer. and he buys the chinese furniture. you know what? is everything the bottom line? be an american. be a patriot. pay the extra 20% and feel good about it. and really, that's all i've got to say. thanks. >> well, you know, we have lost a lot of manufacturing. and i don't think there is many districts that have lost more than mine. i represent northeast ohio just south of cleveland, akron, youngstown, ravenna, you know, halfway between cleveland and pittsburgh, the old steel belt.

some of these we aren't going to get back. we're not going to get back the tweezer manufacturer. i think our focus needs to be how do we make america competitive to make the high-end advanced manufacturing products that we can sell to the world, the advance batteries that the president talked about. and if we're going to do that, we need a government that is smart. and it's not this all government is bad, all we need to do is make the government small enough to be able to put it in a bathtub and drown it. that kind of incendiary rhetoric is not healthy. we need to pump up national science foundation. pump up national institutes of health. make sure everybody in the country gets a community college degree so we have the workforce necessary to fill these new jobs. how do we grow engineers in the united states and provide scholarships for young people to go to these schools? we've got all kinds of school reform that we need too. but set a vision. and most of this is going to be

in the field of energy. and if we don't wake up and smell the coffee in this country, if we think we're going to be able to still do what we've been doing, we're going to fall behind. china is pumping billions of dollars into all kinds of renewable energy portfolios and the like. and we're falling behind. >> does that mean you disagree with the president on his keystone decision? >> no. i think what he is doing is fine. you know, but we do have opportunities with clean gas that is here in the united states, the natural gas. let's convert our economy over. we only have 2% of the world's oil, for god's sake. let's get off this idea that we can still run on oil. we can't. and we keep going down this road further and further while china is investing billions of dollars in green technology windmills, nuclear, clean coal, all of these things. we need to be doing that stuff and get out of this ideology and get our head out of the sand and let's go. we have a generation of young americans who have no clue what they're going to do when they get out of college, or they're already out of college and they

have $100,000 in debt and have no clue there is no space race. there is no we're going to lead the world in manufacturing, there is no connection. that's why i was so inspired by the president's state of the union because i really thought of all of the candidates you see in the republican primary, and what you hear coming from the president of the united states, if you're a 25-year-old woman thinking what am i going to do, have i $100,000 in college debt, which one of these folks or which one of these parties is really going to lay out an agenda that i can contribute my talents and skills too, it's the president. by far. and that's what we need to do. and we can't worry about the tweezers. manufacturers are gone. how do we get back and do the new generation of manufacturing. >> on that point, here is the dayton daily news from ohio back in october with this headline. "ohio has lost 3500 factory others the last ten years." >> yeah. i'm not surprised because that's the world i live in. >> right. >> every single day. going into these factories,

dealing with trade adjustment assistance for the workers, being with these workers as they go through bankruptcy. i've seen too many steel mills close down and manufacturing facilities close down. it's not just the one that closed down, it's the entire supply chain. >> give us -- i want to show our viewers manufacturing in ohio by the numbers. home to about 22,000 manufacturing companies. cincinnati ranks sixth for manufacturing jobs. cleveland 10th and columbus 19th in the whole country. leads the nation in general purpose machinery, second in metal working machinery. 67.74% gross state product is generated by manufacturing, about 80 billion annually. tenth in the nation and fifth in the nation for total manufacturing and dollars. so given what i have just said, paint the picture of youngstown, ohio. what did it look like before? what does it look like now? >> it used to have steel miles that would be miles long down the mahoning river. and there are some great old pictures of it looks like a town

is emptying out because there are thousands and thousands of workers getting out when the whistle blew. people lived all around the steel mill and company towns in some senses. but just in neighborhoods like the breyer hill neighborhood where all the italian immigrants settled and would walk down in to work. and it was a bustling place. now it was dirty. the wives were sweeping the porches twice, sometimes three times a day because the soot would come out of the steel mill. so it was a much different world. today youngstown is a tale of two cities, like many cities. youngstown has a burgeoning tech community, entrepreneur magazine said youngstown was one of the top ten best cities to start a business. we have a business incubator with over 300 worker there's. the average wage is about $58,000 a year doing a lot of business-to-business software. some of the fastest growing companies in the country in education software and green

technologies, companies like turning technologies that these tech magazines ranked a few years ago as the fastest growing tech companies. we have general motors invested millions of dollars along with state incentives and governor strickland to the lordstown plant. 4700 workers were selling the chevy cruze. it's the best-selling car general motors has now. we just had huge investments because of our location with the marcellus and utica shale. we've seen huge investments of almost a billion dollars for steel companies there. velora which is a french company just put $650 million into a steel meal between youngstown and girard, ohio. so we have thousands of building trades working in youngstown. and then you'll go a few miles away, and other building trades can't find work. so it's really the tale of two cities. but my point is on why i get so adamant about the investments and the sciences and the health

is because i'm seeing in akron and in youngstown what these investments lead to. they lead to job creation at the end of the day. and when we pull back those investments, businesses don't thrive. businesses don't partner with them. and we have no new economy. and we're getting stuck talking about tweezers when we should be talking about high-end battery manufacturing and how that can the done in the united states. and in places like youngstown and the old steel belt, if we had a tax policy that would incentive advise converting buses and trucks over to natural gas because of the boom we have, you're talking about relying on american energy right under our feet, tax incentives to make those new engines and trucks and buses here in the united states in places like youngstown and akron cleveland, ohio. that's exciting. people want that vision for a bright future. and we're not giving it to them because we're dealing with ideology. >> let me get some more phone calls in here. patricia is a republican in

minneapolis. patricia, as we take your call, let's take a look at the unemployment rate nationally compared to ohio as well as u.s. manufacturing jobs in that state. good ahead, patricia. >> caller: yeah, the only one stuck on talking about tweezers is your guest there. let me tell you what fair isn't. it isn't fair that half the citizens in america don't pay any income tax at all. i know they pay the other taxes, but so do the people who are working and risking and investing their money. and he doesn't explain that there is a difference between income tax and capital gains tax. and i'm so sick of hearing about warren buffett too. if he wants to give the government some money, go right ahead, warren. go right ahead. >> all right, patricia. let's take your two points. >> you know, there is a lot of people in my district who do pay taxes. they would trade places with you, ma'am, in a heartbeat to have a better situation.

there are five people, four or five people looking for every one job that is available. the jobs we have lost in ohio that are now being replaced by jobs, you're lucky. you're lucky if they pay half as much as the jobs you lost. there are a lot of americans. i know it's convenient, and i know it's cool to say oh, these people want to live on the dole. i know thousands of people that i have met over my 10 and 12 years in congress and in the state senate. they want a job. they don't want a handout. they don't want to be on the government dole. they want to go to work. and they want a job with health care and benefits and a pension. and i'm sick and tired, quite frankly, of people trying to paint with the broad brush how the american middle class or most americans don't want to work. i can't remember the last person i met who said i'm really comfortable. i love being on the public dole. there people who do that? of course there are. are if there people who take advantage? of course there are there are people in this building right now who the countries aren't

getting maximized contributions from them as far as their contribution to the workforce. but to say that most americans are like that i think is demeaning. and we've got to stop this. the right wing has been funding these groups, trying divide us. we saw it in ohio with the collective bargaining. who is union, who is nonunion. who is public sector union, who is private sector union. who is white, who is black, who is straight, who is gay, millions of different ways to divide us as americans. and here we are, divided, not going anywhere, getting beat up by china with manufacturing and other things. there are people that want to work. and we need to stop demeaning them and trying to lump them in with kind of the fringe elements of our society. >> let's hear from an independent. ben in tennessee, you're on the air. >> caller: yes. the gentleman there, y'all had the house and senate both for two years.

and all you did is work on the health care and we had 30 million people out of work. why didn't we instead of paying unemployment, why didn't we put them to work doing infrastructure? >> i agree. i was one of the people saying that the stimulus bill originally, you know, needed a lot more infrastructure spending in it. because the unemployment within the building trades was about 20, 25%. and infrastructure spending would have gotten a lot of those people back to work. so the stimulus bill did not have enough infrastructure spending. and we should have then passed the highway bill on top of the stimulus bill which would have really gotten people back to work. i agree with you. we do need to look at countries like germany to see what they do with a very active workforce on how we can keep people in the workforce so they don't lose their in spite or instead of getting unemployment benefits.

keep them at work, maybe have a government partnership with some of these companies i think would probably be the best way to go. so i agree with you. i think infrastructure spending is a good way to get a lot of people back to work. think about what we're saying here. we're talking about government investments in things that need to be done, in roads and bridges all across the united states, airports, you know, hopefully high speed rail one day. but also combined sewer overflow. in akron, for example, it's like a billion dollar bill for to deal with their combined sewer. akron doesn't have that kind of money. we need federal investments. and it gets people back to work, raises tax revenue, and we're up and running. >> on the spending issue, the cbo headlines in the papers this morning, here is the washington times. no sun in the cbo forecast. this is a tweet from joseph ramirez. representative ryan, the cbo saying spend more now, save later? explain. >> well, i think at this point

politically that having investments coming from the federal government wouldn't even have a committee hearing in the house of representatives. and i think the most reasonable economist would say in this kind of liquidity trap that we're in, you spend now to get us out, and then have long-term deficit spending. and i think doing the buffett rule, getting some money up-front or even in the next ten years from the top 1% in investing that money in the infrastructure spending now would be a good thing. but the key is long-term. we've got to deal with the long-term deficit issue. there is no doubt about it. but if you don't get revenues up, you don't get people back to work, you're not going to have the revenues you need to have long-term deficit reduction. >> the cbo director may provide more clarity in what he was trying to say yesterday. he'll be up on capitol hill before the house committee, your committee at 10:00 a.m. live coverage on c-span 3 this morning.

dorothy is a democrat in kansas city, missouri. good ahead, dorothy. >> caller: good morning, c-span. >> good morning. >> caller: and thank you, congressman, for really trying to do the right thing. i am a democrat and i am also a christian. when i see -- i've been here 66 years. and what i see going on is hurting the whole country. most people do want to work. there is always going to be some people that don't want to work. when i got out of high school, i wanted to work and couldn't find a job. i was a very good student. but what i want to say is keep pressing on. clean energy is the way. >> thank you. >> oil is just a way of somebody's pockets getting fat. >> she brought up -- when she said something, i thought back in youngstown there used to be steel mills on each side of the road. and you could quit your job and

walk across the street or down the road and get another one immediately. i mean that's -- that's the real incentive to work is know you're going to go and get a good paying job. let's go to eddie, a republican in lawrenceville, georgia. you're up next. >> caller: yes. i was wondering if mr. ryan would please look up in the webster's dictionary the meaning of the word fair. it means that everybody gets treated equal. and i wish you would look that up and quit using the word fair, because the rich pay most of the taxes in this country, and you know that. if you don't know it, you should find out about it. president obama has spent over a billion dollars -- i mean a trillion dollars this year. the numbers came out yesterday. the numbers look dismal. it looks like we're going to be in a slump until 2018.

and then you want to talk about a high-speed rail? i don't want to ride on a train and smell everybody's b.o. i want to have my own car. and oil is going to be around for at least 100 years before you get alternative energies that pay off. you know -- >> okay, eddie, i'm going to take that last point. oil around for 100 years before these alternative energies pay off. >> yeah, it's not our oil. we have 2% of the world's oil. and if, eddie, you want to rely on the saudis and the middle eastern countries for oil, hey, god bless you. i just don't think that is a good long-term strategy for the united states when we have the innovative capacity, the creativity to lead a revolution. not to mention the issue of global warming which i'm sure you may not be that concerned with. but many of us are. and think that this could be a whole new industry for us. but to say we're going to rely on oil from the saudis for the

next 100 years i think is really reducing and diminishing america. and he talked about fairness. eddie, it is fair that people in the united states of america, the wealthiest country in the world have a sick child that can't get adequate health care or affordable health care because of the screwed up health care system we've got? is it fair that someone is sitting in youngstown or akron, ohio, had to feel the ramifications of a deregulated wall street of people who followed their self-interest right off a cliff and took the entire economy down with it? is that fair? no, that's not fair. fairness is regulating the markets and making sure that the bounty and the blessings of america get spread across for everybody to at least have a modicum of fairness. and that means health care, affordable education, and a basic standard of living. >> stella on twitter wants to know this. where the heck are all the gas taxes going since the infrastructure is so bad. where is it? >> part of is it's not geared

for inflation. so it gets outpaced almost immediately once a lot of these gas taxes are put on. and at the end of the day, it gets more and more expensive to pave roads and do bridges and everything else because of the inflation within the economy. i think we do need to figure out a better way to fund our infrastructure and to get more money in the pot because we've got a lot of needs. but at the end of the day, most citizens support taxes on gasoline because they know they're going to give it at the tank and it's going to go to the roads. you can always see the benefits of it. >> let's go to lancaster, pennsylvania. john, an independent. >> caller: yes, congressman, it's a pleasure to hear you after the last few days of listening to the republican race to the bottom. yeah, a couple of quick ones. are you one of the co-sponsors of the new get money out of politics bill that is

circulating in congress? i understand there is about 35 people. >> yeah. >> caller: in that. and then secondly, why don't the democrats get together with the occupy wall street folks more vocally and just talk with them and about them? there is going to be a spring and a summer that is going to rock the united states. and it would behoove you guys to get on their boat. they've got a lot more voices than anyone has given them credit for. >> yeah, i think that's an important point. yes, i am for getting money out of politics. i think that is the number one corrupting factor of the cause of the problems down here in washington, d.c. so getting the money out is, you know, running every two years and having to raise millions and millions of dollars and your eye comes off the ball, which is legislation and figuring out how to solve the country's problems. in the occupy movement i think has really been one of the most important movements in my

lifetime in politics because they are at the right spot. they're at wall street. and there is a lot of big money folks who have been spending a lot of money over the last 30 years saying the problems in washington, you know. go to washington. washington is the problem, not the solution, from reagan on. and at the end of the day, it was a bunch of big money people saying stay way from wall street. let us do what we want. go blame washington. take all your anger and frustration with globalization and changes in the economy, go blame washington for those problems. and finally the light bulb went off and there is a lot of people on wall street now doing the occupy movement. which i think is really, really important, because it has shifted the focus from the tea party ideology of sorts in washington to the real source of the problem, where all the money comes from that funds these ads and funds washington, d.c. is wall street. it's great. >> tracy is a democrat in washington, d.c. go ahead, tracy. >> caller: hi. thank you, congressman, for your efforts.

and just as the previous caller said, to keep us from racing to the bottom. have i two quick questions. first of all, people are against their own needs only because president obama. he has passed ledbetter that has allowed people to have equal pay. which means these people against president obama is going to get equal pay to their male counterparts. another thing is no one will be denied insurance. i work as a nurse, which is very important. only the very rich and the very poor are able to get adequate health care. so these people who are against the president and his policies are against their own basic health care. so i wish that the democrats would go out there and just specifically tell people these things because they're not getting it. thank you very much. >> agreed.

>> okay. >> a boring file clerk on twitter says can you name me one thing that isn't the fault of the republicans? do the dems have no fault for this economic mess? >> there is plenty of responsibility to go around. i think when you look at the fact that president bush was in office. the republicans controlled the congress for much of that time, and they completely deregulated wall street and anything else they could get their hands on, they defunded administrative agencies that were charged with overseeing wall street. and this was a basic strategy of conservative right wing think tanks and i'dologists who say deregulate, defund the government, let the private sector work no matter what happens, and that's been their philosophy. where i think the democrats are saying we need not too much government, but we need well regulated markets.

we don't need too much spending, but we do need to make some really smart investments into infrastructure and to research and development and the sciences and education to make sure everybody can afford it. there is plenty of blame to go around. but i think if you look at who was pushing this philosophy, and has been foretty stable markets about 1980. then we got into the savings & loan problems at the end of the '80s. and we had the housing problems. we get this volatility in the markets. because of this whole deregulation idea. and i think we need to get back to what served the country so well from post world war ii until about 1980. well-regulated markets, making sure that the level of income and equality and income disparity isn't so huge that people go on the public dole because it maybe does pay better than an actual job. invest back in the middle class. so there is blame to go around. but at the end of the day, its right wing who has controlled

the tax and trade policies in the united states. >> let's go to the republican line. randy, black river falls, wisconsin. >> caller: good morning. after listening to the representative talk here, i heard him say we don't want to be dependent on the saudis for all our oil. >> yep. >> caller: but then again, you don't want the pipeline going down where the united states would get oil from the keystone pipeline either. that would be 20,000 immediate jobs and over 100,000 jobs for truck drivers, everything all the way down. once you get all these jobs, do you know how much tax all those people payment into the government, to get this government going, to get it out of recession? president obama and the labor relations board, they didn't even want boeing to come in down there. and all those thousands of jobs that was going to be in down there. i hope the people of the united states are really listening to you double-take on everything you say and try to blame

everything on the republicans. president obama is so far over his head in his job, he's got to be gone. i'll take anybody. i'll take another democrat other than president obama. he is way over his head. >> all right. randy. let me get the congressman to respond to you about keystone and energy issues. >> you know, the numbers have fluctuated on different studies that i've seen about keystone. but again, at the end of the day, oil is not the answer. and i know those are -- those could be a potentially temporary jobs that we would have in the united states, and i'm for jobs in the united states. i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. but i'm talking about long-term. and i think, you know, a gentleman like that, you know, many instances, we see what we want to see. i'm in ohio. you know what i've seen? i saw president obama and senator sherrod brown and others save the american auto industry. and because of that, we have plants in toledo, lorraine, just outside of youngstown and lordstown ohio.

auto workers working, making good money. he put tariffs on chinese tubing coming in which led to the steel mill i mentioned earlier, $650 million of investments. got almost a thousand building trades out there working right now building the facility. another company located in brookfield, tmk and i think they're going to add more. 20 bucks an hour these are. because of the tariff president obama put on the chinese. so it may be convenient to say to pick one or two issues. but i think when you look on the whole of what he has done compared to what the circus is going on in the republican primaries right now, it's clear that this is the man who we need to lead us into the next four years. >> matthew is an independent in port clinton, ohio. we're talking to congressman tim ryan of ohio, democrat. go ahead. >> caller: hi, tim. to tell you the truth, i don't think there is very much that you have said that is true this morning. it's very difficult to do business in ohio. it's been tax and regulated right out of business.

ohio's spending is insane. i've seen some of the things they do right in my immediate area. and we can't go on with the spending. thank you. >> well, my talk of regulation was more about wall street regulation, not necessarily not all that familiar with exactly what goes on from the stateside of regulation. but my point was wall street has been completely deregulated. and that led to everyone following their self-interest off the cliff, which affected a lot of places right outside of port clinton and toledo and the housing problems on the west side of cleveland and places like toledo have been huge because of that lack of responsibility and lack of cops on the beat on wall street. and at the end of the day, it's been a real problem. and it's important to know too right now, when you talk about the regulatory state of environment in ohio we have a republican governor, a republican house, a republican senate. so, you know, and you're talking about the business environment