Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, finally we see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is not a train. It is, in fact, the eventual and necessary passage of the Ex-Im reauthorization bill.

As you know, last week the Ex-Im bill passed the House by a vote that was 72 percent in favor. We have been told for months and months as we debate the Ex-Im Bank that this bill could not possibly pass the House as a stand-alone bill. Remarkably, when that myth was put to the test, we found out that not just 51 percent, but 72 percent of the House supports reauthorization of the Ex-Im bill.

Last night we faced another challenge for the Ex-Im bill which was, in fact, a series of amendments on the Ex-Im portion of the Transportation bill. Once again, we exceeded expectations by having supermajorities on almost--in fact, all of these amendments suffering defeat at a very wide margin. So now what we know is we have a bill that continues to have broad-based support and continues to represent the necessary steps that need to be taken to reauthorize and reopen the Ex-Im Bank.

Let's just recount history. The Export-Import Bank has been closed for over 3 months, preventing needed support for small business across the country. Many of those small businesses--guess where they are? They are in States such as North Dakota. A lot of people, such as my colleague from Washington State who has come on the floor--I think everybody understands the significance of exports to States on the Pacific Rim and understands that story, but I don't think anyone really thinks about the Ex-Im Bank in conjunction with places such as North Dakota. So I wish to take a few moments today to talk about small business, to talk about the people who have been dramatically affected by the closure of the Ex-Im Bank and why it is so important that we understand, appreciate, and not have a long-term history that does not move the Ex-Im Bank forward.

Let's start out by talking about the 5,800 small businesses around the country that depend on the Export-Import Bank to finance export deals and how many of them right now have no support as this issue has languished in the Senate. I think we all know that small business makes up a large percentage of that economic opportunity in the United States. That is true in North Dakota and true to a greater extent because probably 95 percent of all employers in North Dakota qualify as small businesses.

For many of these businesses, if they do not have help exporting their products, that help, which the Export-Import Bank provides, they can't grow. With more than 95 percent of all consumers in the world living outside the United States, if businesses in the United States do not export, if they are not competitive, we will lose economically.

Several of my colleagues have been on the floor talking about manufacturing and talking about economic opportunity. At the end of the day this is about small business, but it is also about the jobs that small business create. So we have seen companies such as GE and Boeing, which use, interestingly enough, 16 suppliers in North Dakota that are dependent on the work GE and Boeing does--and their necessary reaction to the failure of this Congress to appropriately and timely reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank has been to look for other ways to encourage their business growth, and that encouragement has not been in this country. They have had to look overseas.

So it is critically important we understand the idea of a supply chain. Everybody says: Well, this is a bank for big business. This is a bank for these people. That is just pure nonsense. In every one of those deals that is done for one of these major manufacturers, inside that deal are literally thousands of small businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs created in those small businesses as they support the supply chain.

I want to talk about a number of the export-import uses in my State and brag a bit about the work they do because they are on the cutting edge with a lot of their technologies. The first business I want to talk about is Amity Technology. It is a 20-year-old family-owned company based in Fargo that sells farm manufacturing equipment to companies around the world. They began in August of 1977. They sold their first business to Case International and then built Amity in the winter of 1996.

What I love to tell about this story is these brothers--one of whom I went to college with--come from the family who actually created the Bobcat. So they have been entrepreneurs, they have been inventors, they have been innovators, and they have driven a lot of jobs in North Dakota.

Amity is a big user of the Ex-Im Bank. It is the largest distributor of sugar beet equipment, working with some of the world's largest farm equipment companies around the world. With agriculture markets slowing down, business is harder to come by and so it is particularly important they have all the tools in their arsenal. Without the help of the Export-Import Bank, the company, which employs 70 North Dakotans, could quickly lose out on at least 10 percent of their business and face tough questions about the future of their exports.

The next business I want to talk about is WCCO Belting in Wahpeton. Wahpeton is a small community in the far southeastern corner of our State. It is a 60-year-old, family-owned rubber supply company often used in farm equipment that is supplied to every major farm equipment company in the world.

For 12 years, the Export-Import Bank has allowed WCCO Belting to continue to export opportunities it had previously been ignoring. The Bank has supported over $850,000 in exports from the belting company since 2007. The company employs 200 employees who generate more than 60 percent of their annual revenue from customers that are located outside of the United States. That would not be possible if it were not for the Ex-Im Bank; if that 60 percent of their business is driven by the opportunity that the Ex-Im Bank gives them.

I want to talk about JM Grain. That is a small grain company in Garrison. They are a young family-owned pea, lentil, and chickpea distributing company that supplies their products to top packaging and food companies around the world. When you look at their numbers, $15 million--in fact, 70 percent of the company's annual revenue for almost a decade--has been backed by the Ex-Im Bank. It has allowed JM Grain to pursue export opportunities to top manufacturing and packaging food ingredient companies that demand buyers to provide financing for 90 to 100 days--something they could not do on their own.

Incidentally, they could not find a private bank that would be willing to do it. Without the Export-Import Bank, JM Grain would not have been able to pursue exports to such high-quality, high-selling companies because it would have to significantly cut its price or risk going under.

The company now has doubled or tripled the pay of its workers, retaining its workforce throughout the oil boom, which has been awfully tough in North Dakota given high living costs, and has been able to hire top technological workers. It is incredible. It is an incredible story, but it is a story that would not be possible without the Ex-Im Bank. It is responsible for $10 million of the company's annual $15 million in revenue. Without the Export-Import Bank, the company would risk losing sales to competitive exporting companies abroad, including companies from India, China, and South America.

The last company I want to talk about is Equipment Wholesalers based in Fargo, ND, and Sioux Falls, SD. They sell equipment such as John Deere tractors in the United States and abroad. Equipment wholesalers told us if the Export-Import Bank is not reauthorized, it will have a negative impact on the company's sales. How great is that? Well, it will be a 35- to 40-percent impact on their sales. Imagine that. Just because of the inactivity of Congress, we have risked 35 to 40 percent of this company's business. The company acknowledges it has already lost business to companies in Germany that have access to Germany's export-import agency. They say without the Export-Import Bank being reauthorized, Equipment Wholesalers will lose even more business.

While our businesses are left at a disadvantage because the Export-Import Bank expired, foreign--foreign--export-import banks, including those in India and China and 60 other places around the world, are hugely benefiting. In fact, they are wondering what is going on in the United States, but we are not going to let any grass grow under our feet as we run to daylight and a take advantage of the inaction in Washington, DC. They are already stepping in and filling our place.

If we do not reauthorize the Export-Import Bank to support American businesses and manufacturers, China and India will step in. There is no doubt about it. They are already doing it. In fact, during the recent downturn in both of those economies, the first investment they made was putting billions more in their export credit agencies. Do you know why? Because it made business sense. It made sense to their balance of trade. It made sense to their economy to support their manufacturers, especially in an environment where we weren't supporting ours.

Last week my bipartisan bill with Senator Kirk, which would reauthorize this agency, passed with the support of more than 70 percent of the House. Just yesterday--again, I will repeat--the Export-Import Bank reauthorization was attached to the House Transportation bill. Despite efforts to once again derail the Export-Import Bank from people who believed they could kill it altogether with amendments, over two-thirds--and in most cases those same House Members who tried to kill it--voted against those Export-Import Bank-killing amendments.

Doesn't that tell us something? Doesn't that tell us that the vast majority of people here are not ideologues; that they look at the facts? They say: In what world would you not support exports?

We used to do this in State government when I was attorney general and when I served on the Industrial Commission. We would talk about North Dakota's economy and we would say: What do we do to grow economies? We say: We have new wealth creation. I am not picking on retail businesses. Retail businesses typically, unless we are inviting Canadians, which we do, to come down and spend money, they are not new wealth creation. It is those things that bring new dollars to our State. If you look at new wealth creation in this country and look at what creates wealth in this country, guess what it is. It is exports. It is having a favorable balance of trade. It is making sure we are a country that believes in reaching out to the 95 percent of the consumers in this world and saying to them: We produce the best quality agricultural products, we produce the best quality manufacturing products, we are the top supplier and the most trusted source of products in the world, but we need the tools to make those sales, and the Ex-Im Bank is a critical tool. It is part of that structure of trade infrastructure that we need to make this work.

I hope, I sincerely hope--because I don't know whether I am going to be here when we go through this again--I hope the lessons of the last 3 months have been learned. I hope the lessons we have been preaching since really this spring--that we cannot let this Bank expire and there will be dire consequences if we do--have been learned and that the Ex-Im Bank and the people at the Ex-Im Bank, but more importantly that our American businesses that rely on the Export-Import Bank, our jobs that rely on the Export-Import Bank, and our opportunities created by the Export-Import Bank, are never forgotten; that they are never left behind.

Once again we have cleared yet another hurdle. The light is at the end of the tunnel. We believe we are ready, willing, and excited about the opportunity of once again opening the doors of the Export-Import Bank and welcoming American business in and saying once again, ``America is open for business'' to the rest of the world.

Mr. President, I yield the floor to my friend from Washington.

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Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I want to make one final point, along with my colleague from Washington State. I don't know how many times the Senator from Washington and I have been on the floor telling the story of the Ex-Im Bank, about what the problems have been since we have closed the Bank for business, talking about what this means for small business, trying to reflect the amazement we get from our small businesses: Why is this happening when we return money to the Treasury and this doesn't cost anything?

I find it curious that as many times as we have been down here, there has been no one down here arguing the counterpoint. There has been no one down here willing to ask us to yield for a question about why we believe what we believe about the Ex-Im Bank. There is no one down here challenging what we are saying about the Ex-Im Bank. I find that interesting, and I think it is a lesson maybe for the future--let's not mess around with jobs; let's not mess around with people.

I think everybody thinks they are picking on some kind of large corporation, but the reality is that those large corporations in many ways can wait this out or they can devise a business plan that gives them a workaround from the Ex-Im Bank or they can assemble their materials someplace other than the United States. But my small businesses, the ones I just outlined, don't have that choice, and they don't have a big line of credit they can use to just wait this out. They don't have the ability to wait.

It is one thing to say we are all about small business and helping small business. We hear it every time. The two great lines that are used here: We care about the middle class and we care about small business. But as it relates to the Ex-Im Bank, there has been no activity here that would actually prove the point that we care about small business.

So I want to say I do find it extraordinarily curious that we have gone unchallenged in this whole discussion. No one really wants to take us on because at the end of the day there is no argument on the other side. Yet we have closed this Bank for over 3 months. We have closed this Bank and this opportunity for America's manufacturers, America's small businesses, and all of the great people who work there.

Just know that I am so grateful for the work of my colleague from Washington. She has been an incredible leader. I thank her for everything she has done. She is an expert on the Export-Import Bank but also a woman who has been in business most of her life and who understands the critical importance of the Ex-Im Bank.

So let's not unlearn this lesson. Let's make sure this never happens again and that we never disrupt Americans' economic opportunity the way we have by shutting down the Export-Import Bank for the last 3 or 4 months.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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