The biggest piece of advice I have is - listen. Don't jump to the answer or what you think the answer is. The more you listen, the more you learn.
Tim Ryan
The people I represent in Northeast Ohio and the tens of millions of workers across our country are proud to be called blue collar.
We focus sometimes too much on the minimum wage, and we should be talking about living wages and middle class wages and pensions and benefits and the kind of thing that people in the industrial Midwest talk about all the time.
I got a lot of respect for Nancy Pelosi. I love her. She was a mentor of mine.
When I talk about 'working class,' I don't talk about 'white working class,'. I talk about 'working class,' and a third of working class people are people of color. If you are black, white, brown, gay, straight, you want a good job. There is no more unifying theme than that.
The Democrats have failed to have a real robust message for working-class people in places like Ohio - these states that Donald Trump came in and won.
If you love your neighbor and are compassionate, are you automatically a Christian? Practicing present-moment awareness does not entail joining any religion or accepting any belief system.
As a Catholic, I find mindfulness helps me participate in my religion more wholeheartedly. If you are praying the rosary, participating in the rituals at Mass, or listening to the priest preach, you will actually be paying attention! Whatever your religion is, it can enhance the experience of participating in that religion.
We need a brand as a party that says we're the party that are going to help working-class people, white people, black people, brown people, gay people, straight people, improve opportunity for them to grow their wages, to have security, economic security.
Obviously, I have certain policy positions that I push and advocate for that would benefit people dealing in a system that breeds inequality and makes life more difficult for people.
It's a lot easier to negotiate and be skillful from the majority. I want Paul Ryan negotiating with us. I don't want to have to negotiate with Paul Ryan.
I love studying different religions. For me, learning and drawing from the different religious traditions is essential to being a good public servant. And the connections between our various religious traditions become our public ethic; they tie us together.
To be competitive globally, we have to reduce the corporate tax rate.
We can't just be the party of redistribution of wealth; we need to be the party of the creation of wealth in communities all over the country, not to just Silicon Valley, not just Wall Street, but all over.
I have a chicken-wing addiction... I sometimes can't get out of a restaurant without at least trying their chicken wings. So that's my great downfall.
Trump committed crimes. It's pretty clear. Although I'm not sure how it plays out politically, I do think you have a responsibility to act when you think - and there's ample evidence to show - that the president has been engaged in criminal conduct.
I think our failure as a caucus has been not to focus on economic issues. I think we - and I'm supportive of all the issues that - that we talk about, but you need an economic - a robust, economic message that - that covers everybody.
I traveled the country for a year and a half helping Hillary Clinton to try to become president.
Everyone has to do their part, too. No one is disconnected. And everyone has to improve their skills, take care of their own health to the extent they can and contribute their time and talents to the community and country.
Trickle-down economics doesn't work, but we need the power and innovation that comes from the free enterprise system. There's no way we're going to decarbonize the American economy without innovation and the profit motive. It's just not gonna happen.
I've heard from CEOs of major corporations and members of Congress talk about their spouses getting mad at them when they're home because they're spaced out and thinking about work. It's so easy for all of us to have our mind on the last meeting or the next one.
I have lived my whole life just outside Youngstown, Ohio. We watched the steel mills close and 50,000 jobs disappear in the late 1970s. We watched businesses move overseas throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Kids are growing up with a bombardment of information through technology.
There's no better inside player than Nancy Pelosi, and I don't have any animosity towards her.
I got kids that are growing up in a Donald Trump world because we screwed up because we haven't been able to craft a message and push policies that connect with working class people.
Like many Americans, my family and I have spent our entire lives at the epicenter of de-industrialization.
We have a perception problem with the party. We are perceived as being a coastal elite, Ivy League party that does not connect to working-class people. The waitress, the teacher, the construction worker - we've lost our connection to them.
We need social and emotional learning in our schools. I think we also need to get good food in the schools. We can't be feeding our kids Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk.
Globalization in the aggregate generates wealth, no question. But it gets concentrated.
We can't green the economy without the power of the free-market system.
We need to be a party saying, 'We are not going to be happy until we get those $30, $40, $50 an hour jobs back for working-class people.'
I know from the stories of my grandparents and great-grandparents the real struggles and discrimination that Italian Americans faced when they first immigrated to America.
It is like our foreign policy has attention deficit disorder.
I'm a progressive who knows how to talk to working-class people, and I know how to get elected in working-class districts. Because at the end of the day, the progressive agenda is what's best for working families.
I just find Bobby Kennedy's short campaign for president so inspiring because his rhetoric identified what America can be like if we care about each other.
I am Irish, so I do like a good fight every now and then.
And I believe that if we can care about whether or not our neighbor has a good job or access to affordable health care for their children, and we move to implement the policies that can improve these situations, we will unleash vast amounts of human potential and recapture the American spirit.
I wrote 'A Mindful Nation' to promote the values of slowing down, taking care of ourselves, being kind, and helping each other. It seems to me that if we embrace these values individually, it will benefit us collectively. And our country will be a little bit better off as a result.
I've got a really long record around progressive politics, especially when it comes to the economy. Voted against the Bush tax cuts. Voted against the Trump tax cuts. Believe in investment into lifting people up, closing the opportunity gaps that exist in our society.
The mindfulness revolution is not quite as dramatic as the moon shot or the civil rights movement, but I believe, in the long run, it can have just as great an impact.
Happiness is found by deeply experiencing the exact moment we are in.
My grandparents and my mom prayed the rosary a lot, and later in life, I had a priest friend of mine teach me centering prayer, based on Father Thomas Keating's work. That led to practicing different kinds of meditation off and on as I got older.
If we could figure out the big economic question - which really is how do we get wealth out of the coasts and into the industrial Midwest and start creating real jobs by the hundreds, if not by the thousands - in places like I represent, that's a game changer for me.
I embrace a Green New Deal; I just think we have to have public-private partnerships if we're going to get there. We have to align the environmental incentives with the financial incentives.
The key to - and magic of - good campaigns is when you pull people together. You unite them around a common theme.
We need a president who doesn't just visit our forgotten communities for rallies but one who lives in them - one who knows the pain and suffering that comes with being unseen and unheard.
I would think that conserving our natural resources should be a conservative position: Not to waste food, and not to throw away a lot of the food that we buy.
Being tough on China is one thing. Being completely erratic with no strategy and dragging businesses and farmers through the mud, using them as pawns in the game, is not the way to beat China.
My great grandfather emigrated from Italy, and my grandfather worked in a steel mill and was able to raise kids and have a family and go on vacation.
The Italian culture and values have significantly shaped who I am, and I would never intentionally demean or degrade the very culture that has been so integral to my life.
