Defense Level Playing Field Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We have another great bipartisan success today, at the closing day of our Congress, and I want to thank Representatives Larsen, Blunt, Tiahrt, Moran, and McDermott for bringing this bipartisan bill to the floor. This bill is the Defense Level Playing Field Act, which will incorporate in standalone legislation an amendment we adopted with huge bipartisan support previously by a vote of 410-8 on the defense authorization bill.

This bill is very important to bring a level of fairness and competitiveness from a job creation perspective to the tanker contract, which is now one of the largest procurement contracts in American history, a $35 billion contract providing for 179, and ultimately 400, aerial refueling planes, which will replace the Eisenhower-era tankers, which is so critical to our Nation's skeleton and backbone of our Nation's defense.

I note the basic thrust of this bill is to make sure that in our procurement process that we have fairness--fairness both to the law and fairness to the American workers, who are so successful. And one of the bidders we hope to be so successful with is the Boeing 767 platform, which will be fully capable of continuing the tradition of American provision of the very backbone of our American fleet and providing our tankers.

I want to make four points about what this bill will do. Basically, what this bill will do is require the Defense Department to take into consideration any unfair competitive advantage of any of the bidders in this contract. What basically this bill will do is require that the Pentagon take into consideration any unfair competitive advantage enjoyed by either of the bidders, Boeing or the Airbus consortium, and that is defined as costs of development, production, or manufacturing that are not fully borne by the offeror of any such contract.

Obviously, what gave rise to this amendment was the fact that we have found that there were over $5 billion of illegal, unfair competitive advantage that has been enjoyed by one of the contractors, the Airbus consortium.

But I want to make four points about what our bill does. Number one, our bill basically says that we need a fair competition. We are happy to compete as Americans. We love competition. We're happy to compete, but we need to do it on a level playing field. And this bill is very fair because it says that any unfair competitive advantage of either of the bidders needs to be taken into consideration in this bill. We love competition, but it needs to be fair.

Second, this bill is fair to both sides, Boeing and Airbus, America and Europe, because it requires an unfair competitive advantage from either bidder to be taken into consideration. And it is WTO-compliant. We were careful to draft the bill with that in mind.

Third, this is an enormous contract, and there have been enormous unfair competitive advantages bestowed on one of the bidders--frankly, Airbus. The $5 billion of illegal subsidies that we have found come out to somewhere between 27 and $5 million an airplane. This is an extraordinarily unfair advantage that one of the bidders has been given, and we need to take that into consideration.

Fourth, the job importance of this issue cannot be overstated. It is estimated that 62,000 jobs could hang in the balance if we allow these illegal subsidies not to be remedied in this procurement contract. American workers have built the best airplanes. They're ready to do it. And we're not going to allow tens of thousands of jobs to be lost based on illegal subsidization by our friends in Europe.

Now we have standalone legislation. We look forward to giving the Senate every opportunity to act on this.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I want to put in a good word for my comrade in arms, TODD TIAHRT. He isn't with us right at the moment, but he did great work on this--he has had a great career--as well as Mr. Larsen.

A couple of closing comments.

I come from a Boeing family. My uncle's cousins have worked with Boeing products from the 707, to the 737, to the 727, to the 747. Now they hope to work on the 767 tanker product. So this is a hometown team issue for me, but it is an international issue as to whether or not we are going to have rules when we compete with our friends across the pond, and we are happy to compete no matter what team we are on. This simply insists that America will follow the rules in a fair competition. It is the right thing to do.

So, in that regard, Madam Speaker, I will note that sometimes Congress reserves the best in its legislation and the best in its speakers pro tem for the last, and I think that this is the best in both ways.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. INSLEE. I just wanted to address Mr. Miller's concern, wanted to advise him that we have been in discussions for the last several days with the current minority staff on the committee, who have all been well-advised about our intention to bring this in one way or another, either by UC or suspension, to the floor, and we've appreciated their cooperation in doing that.

I also want to advise Mr. Miller that this is exactly the same language we did vote for, including the gentleman from Florida, in its previous incarnation in the Defense authorization bill. I hope that I can say this is a fairly noncontroversial issue in the House, and we hope that when the light of public interest is shone on the Senate that they will act on this as well on behalf of America.

Madam Speaker, I would reserve my time unless the gentleman has no further speakers.

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