Conventions. You get the big crowd and on the other side, the early mornings, the 4 00 a. M. Wakeup call so you can catch a plane. In the early states are not easy to get to. From ohio you have to go to chicago and iowa, charlotte into South Carolina or atlanta. The travel, packing and unpacking the bags, that is the hard part. Being away from the family. The one thing that has been interesting is there is almost a consensus in the country not just how screwed up washington , but the challenges of the country. You can be in a Manufacturing Center in youngstown the , hospital has closed, they lost jobs, challenges with opiates, some kind of drug addiction, issues around the environment, algae blooms, water, whatever , and you can go into rural iowa and it is the same thing. They are losing a Maternity Ward in the hospital. They are dealing with a methamphetamine issue. They are losing manufacturing, downtown needs rehabilitated and old theater needs renovated. The commonality to me has been really striking. I thought people were all same thing, but the level of detail as to whats happening to them and the challenges they have is across all of these states. Steve and you have been talking about this on the campaign trail. Lets talk about the lordstown issue. How much was automation versus unions and the industry itself . Rep. Ryan it is kind of like the perfect storm. You have globalization, automation. I said dont get rid of the cafe standards. We are making a smaller more fuelefficient vehicle and i knew once they got rid of fuel efficiency standards, that was going to put the plant in jeopardy. It was a matter of weeks after President Trump got rid of those standards is that they closed the plant down. Combination of everything thats happening. I dont blame donald trump for everything. I blame him for not having a plan to fix it. I think that has been the consensus. Here we have the best jobs in the area. 31 an hour and even the jobs we are talking about replacing are 17 an hour for potential battery facility that goes into lordstown. So, it is the american story of the last 40 years, unfortunately. How do we go from very high paying jobs, globalization, automation, no industrial policy in the united states, no strategy here in the united states, and than the worker takes it on the chin . I think its a combination of all of those. Steve the head of gm making 122 million a year. Do you think there should be salary caps for ceos of these companies . Rep. Ryan you can have salary caps, increased taxes for the top marginal rate. I think there are a variety of ways to get there, but yes the , company made 35 billion in the last three years. They closed facilities and stock prices go up. They got a huge tax cut and the ceo making 281 million on the for every one dollar a person on the factory floor is making. There is a level of unfairness that is gross. It is gross. When you walk the picket line , like i have after the strike happened, and i went from youngstown, to parma, to cleveland in northwest ohio, to detroit, and then to flint, the stories you will hear are people literally driving two hours to get to work and driving two hours home because their family was in cleveland or somewhere a couple hours away and they didnt want to move the kids out of school and the mom or the dad had a decent job. I just want people to know they are making 30 an hour the level of sacrifice many of these workers are making for their families. Is threetoledo, which and a half hours from youngstown. I met more youngstown people in toledo than at the youngstown plant because they got transferred and their families are all back home. I have sympathy for the ones who have young kids. I have a 16yearold 15yearold , and 5yearold, heartbreaking to be away from them. But for them to think i have to do six more years in toledo, ohio and drive back after working five or six, 12 hour shifts to make ends meet is a level of anxiety these families are going through. Those are the best paying jobs in the country. That is just saying, how about all the other people making 15 an hour and have a lot of anxiety, have to drive, or cant afford health care . That pain in the country right now is not even a part of the conversation. Steve what is your campaign all about . Why are you running . Rep. Ryan them. I have been watching this my whole life. I grew up in northeast ohio just out side youngstown. My family all work with factories, all union people. My dad who wasnt union works shifts. Swing shifts. My fatherinlaw worked at a steel mill for 40 years. My grandfather also worked in a steel mill. Hardworked really, really and they keep falling behind. Moments,lly upset and really passionate and moments about it. The unfairness of the leaders in the country that have not put the people in this country on a trajectory to be able to compete. I talk a lot about industrial policy, about having a chief manufacturing officer. Why . Because someone has to help organize the country around sectors of the economy that are growing, like trying to does, any germany does, like country who has a strong middle class does. I believe that i understand that better than anyone else in this race, because i have been living 35 years. Xhole for tim ryan said to his kids and his family i am running for president . Rep. Ryan [laughter] i tried to prepare the kids. This was the running conversation between my wife and i. We have several dinners from the kids. They will call me a lot of things, if we have success you , may see stuff on tv. I wanted to prepare the 15yearold and 16yearold for the psychological piece of it. They are teenagers, so they are living their own lives. I dont think they sit around thinking about me all day but i wanted them to psychologically be prepared for me being away and them having to help their mom out around the house a lot, and what might come from the pressure and stress and the things their friends may do. Rock. E has been like a she has been terrific. She is a first grade teacher. She works really hard. She is a phenomenal teacher. She juggles three kids and two dogs, pretty much by herself. Makingws me support by sure that the kids are getting the attention, help with their homework, good meals for lunch. I try on the weekends to help out a bit on the lunches for the supportt she shows me through action. Steve we saw them at your campaign rally, which we covered live. How did you meet your wife . Rep. Ryan [laughter] through her brotherinlaw at a golf outing, we were playing golf and we played golf. We hit it off immediately. Coincidentally, his last name is ryan too, so we had fun. A couple irish guys on the golf course having some fun. We hit it off and he said, you have to meet my sisterinlaw. She was single with a couple of kids. In the next few months, we ended up seeing each other. 2008, it was almost like the first time, we met at a concert in youngstown, ohio and like that was when the fire started. Steve why did you seek a seat in the house . Why the house . Rep. Ryan i thought the problems were national, global. When i had opportunities to run for governor, problems are really structural. It is definitive for our country for the next decade or two or three. I really liked it, but it was more about youngstown. It was more about how can i be in a position to really help my community that i grew up in. Politicians, when i was growing up, they were running for years on talking about steel mills. It was typical trump stuff. We are going to bring the steel back. But we are not bringing steel mill back, somebody better get a plan together here. Being in a position which is why worked to get on the appropriations committee, there were earmarks and i could bring back the money for particular projects around the district , which i have been able to do. I brought hundreds of millions of dollars back for the local community. But there was always that connection between you need a the issues but around trade, taxes, globalization were national in nature. Steve if you are not successful in getting the democratic nomination, will you run for reelection . Rep. Ryan yes. Yes. I have a lot of seniority on the appropriations committee. Im moving up on the Defense Appropriations Committee and we have been able to do a lot back home. I dont want to forgo what i can do for the people back home. I am still in a position to help, even if this doesnt work out. Im in a good spot. Steve you challenged speaker pelosi. What is your relationship like with her . Rep. Ryan good. I think i conducted myself in a really professional manner. I like her a lot. I have enormous respect for her. I think she is the best politician in the Democratic Party and that bore itself out in the last few days with kind of waiting on the impeachment piece. I have been for impeachment for a month or two, cant remember how long. She waited and waited and kept saying that trump would impede himself. Wouldnt you know it, she was right. So her instincts in the legislative process are second to none. Steve would you, if you stay in the house, like to be speaker someday . Rep. Ryan i dont think so. It was never really my ambition. I was really frustrated when donald trump won because i felt the Democratic Party is not connecting to the people we started talking about in this conversation. The workers. White, black, brown, men, women, workingclass people. We have to do a better job of connecting. In 16,e trump election that became even more apparent when we lost michigan, wisconsin, ohio, and pennsylvania. That was the reason for me running and running for president. Not only do have big plans and i want to look out for the worker, but in addition to that, i can win those states. Those are my kind of states. Those are rust belt states and i do really well in those states and beat donald trump. That is another reason why. But it was the disconnect from them. I think if we reconnect around the new agenda, moving into the new future together, uniting these communities we talked about earlier that have the same problems, it would change the brand of the party. If the nominee is tim ryan from youngstown, ohio, this coastal, liberal, ivy league brand we have been battling against for how long goes away like that. All of a sudden, we are midwest, bluecollar, future of the economy and new idea party. I think that would be very, very effective. Steve so if Elizabeth Warren hypothetically is the nominee, you were worried that is how the republicans will brand her . Rep. Ryan i dont think theres any question. Elizabeth warren knows that. Almost everybody on stage is coastal, ivy league. There is potential to walk into that. We have everything going on with trump now, so who knows what is going to happen, but i think it is not me saying it. It is what i hear when i go home. Mason is 16. He plays football on friday nights. Im talking to moms and dads at Football Games. Plays in the mornings. This is what people are saying. The party has forgotten us. They are not talking about us. They are talking about other issues, but not about the way wages and jobs. There is a real disconnect in these states. They acted out and voted for trump. It is still a real issue. Whoever the nominee is, one, it has to be how do we work hard to , connect to these workers . Self,ting for my naturally, i do. And how do we get right on the issues, so they feel like this stuff isnt being cooked up with them in mind, the policies of the future. Steve i feel like this is water over the bridge now, but why do you think the Hillary Clinton campaign did not do that . Where was the disconnect . Rep. Ryan they didnt go to a lot of these areas. Bill clinton did a bus tour. Barack obama did the bus tour through small, little towns. There wasnt a lot of that. There was a super focus on driving out the base. There was too much talk about trump and not enough about them, the voter, their economic anxiety. I think trump was very effective, too. I mean, he lied. He said he would raise taxes on raise health care expand health care, and one of the most effective thing he said clintonrea was bill passing nafta. We lost thousands of jobs after nafta. Building companies another plan another country and shipping the product back to the united states. Unions and factories went from 13,000 to nothing, the General Motors facility used to be 16,000 people. Now it is idle. Nafta is perceived to have a lot to do with it and has a tremendous impact. So did globalization and automation. That,rump started saying i thought, that is going to hurt. That is a strike. He had an inside lane. Traditionally, a republican couldnt say those things about being against freetrade. He went against republican orthodoxy. I think it helped him a lot. Steve you used the word lane. You have to have a path or a lane to the nomination. What is tim ryan . Rep. Ryan i have to be honest with you, i dont like that lane thing. I think a good politician, a good leader can pull from all these areas. Steve but you need a coalition. Rep. Ryan you need a coalition. I think mine ultimately will be more moderate people, i think. I have kind of disengaged with the medicare for all us far as taking Peoples Health insurance and forcing them into that system. I came out against decriminalizing at the border. I came out against Free Health Care for undocumented workers. I think in documented workers should be able to buy healthcare. If they are sick. If they cant afford it, we have to deal with that. But you cant say you are going to pay for Free Health Care for undocumented workers when everyone else is working, driving two hours to and from work to get health care further family. Thats not going to work. On these issues, i have positioned myself away from most of the field. That would be considered the more centrist or moderate lane. Steve if you talk to those union workers, they like their private health insurance. Rep. Ryan yes. They are driving two hours to and from work to make sure they dont lose it. To communicate very frankly, they make 30 an hour. That is not a lot of money. It is 60,000 a year, it is good solid middleclass. It, a lot of doing it, for the health care they might have a sick kid that needs care. The conversation of taking that away from them when the whole world has collapsed around them, i think is not good. Part of the lane conversation i dont like, is not left or right , but new and better. Vibe we have been trapped in , its not working. Its really not even of reflective of the changes that have come in the economy and the culture and technology. Globalization blew the left right divide away. Donald trump is living in the left right divide and a lot of democrats are putting a fresh coat of paint on older policies that are part of the left right divide. What i have been presenting his ideas that have both democrat and republican support, that are about new and better around industrial policy, around manufacturing, electric vehicles, batteries, charging stations, solar, wind. 80 of the American People support manufacturing. China is cleaning our clock in those areas. Lets unite around something we all agree on. Unionize these jobs so they are middleclass jobs. I talk a lot about social and emotional learning, Trauma Informed Care for kids in schools, really dealing with sure there is a Mental Health counselor in every school. Has been studied with the brookings institution, the American Enterprise institute. Left and right. We literally could put a huge High Education reform proposal together and have the support of the left and the right. I talk a lot about regenerative agriculture, which is about planting crops yearround, it sequesters carbon into the ground. Farmers made money off of this, because they dont use all the pesticides and nitrogen for the fertilizer. They make money and it sequesters carbon, so its huge for the environment, but it has the support of republican and libertarian farmers who dont actually believe that man caused climate change. Who cares . They will sequester carbon, which is what the democrats and the liberals and progressives want. Its great for the environment, it produces healthier foods without pesticides, it gets rid of algae blooms, and the farmers like it. Why wouldnt a modern Democratic Party embrace this and say, this is us, we are going to go to Rural America and make it happen . None of those are left or right. You see what im saying . They are new and better and have a coalition that we could move forward on, which even partisans are dying for some issue or issues we could agree on. Steve with all these issues, how do you make decisions . What is your thought process . How much time do you read . Go through how tim ryan formulates his opinion. Rep. Ryan i read all the time, my wife makes fun of me, magazines and books lying all around. Watch documentaries and talk to people, too. I am a pretty social guy. I talk to these farmers around regenerative agriculture. I have a nice network of people. I wrote a book about food and i wrote a book about mindfulness meditation years ago. I have interesting networks of people who send me stuff because my friends are scientists who study Buddhist Monks brains and written books about that stuff , and people who practice this in schools with veterans and all with farmers and doctors, and the scientists behind that. So i get a lot of incoming, a big network. So i get a lot of really cool , kind of cutting edge, you are going to really like this article kind of thing. I just try to take it in from everywhere. I read a great book by john wooden back in the day, the famous basketball coach. He said 90 of what you learn will be from other people and i have taken that to heart. Steve in your book how often do , you meditate . How often do you have a zen moment . Rep. Ryan [laughter] you could not have a moment because you are meditating. Your mind is going. I try to do 30 minutes in the morning. I started doing this app on the phone. It is called the breathing app. Its free. I recommend it to everyone. I try to do 15 minutes of residence breathing. Seconds in and six out, and you do that for 15 minutes. I dont know what it does to your nervous system but you call m down. If anybody has anxiety or depression or any of these issues, i send them the apps to do it. Another 20 or 30 minutes on just after that following my breath, to the path,s off the future, the impeachment, the campaign, or masons Football Game or my wife is dealing with , and then you come back because those are just thoughts and