Where Are the Jobs?
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this week is yet another week in which the House of Representatives has done virtually nothing. We heard my colleagues say they're repackaging some bills, putting a new bow around it, and they're going to pass it out of here. It's a press release for the week that they go home.
After 14 months of running the House, Republicans haven't passed a real jobs bill. I'll give a great example.
Economists and business people know that the biggest growth markets for American companies are exports. When we support U.S. exports, we are supporting American economics. But to support, we need the Export-Import Bank.
The Ex-Im Bank is a wonder. It provides extremely low-risk loans for businesses for exports, small business, medium-size, and big. The U.S. Export-Import Bank does not cost the American taxpayers one penny. It actually makes money, and it helps American businesses and workers sell hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods.
In short, the Ex-Im Bank does just what we need to be doing: compete in the world economy with every tool we have.
Study after study, year after year says that American export efforts need a huge overhaul.
The President is doing all he can. He stood in this well and talked about it and has put forward proposals. But with simple legislation like the extension of the Export-Import Bank, we could do very much more. The Export-Import Bank is the center of our export strategy.
Now, how does it work?
General Electric was recently bidding on a $500 million rail project to supply 150 diesel-electric locomotives to Pakistan. Pakistani officials told GE they preferred the GE locomotives and were willing to pay a premium for their high quality and dependability.
There was a complication in that the bid from the Chinese locomotive manufacturer included a financing package with longer terms and drastically reduced fees that GE could not match on its own with private sector financing. The Export-Import Bank stepped in with a financing package that matched the Chinese financing package and enabled Pakistan to make its decision on a true apples-to-apples comparison of American and Chinese goods.
We can win that one. We can win it always when we have a level playing field. That's what the Export-Import Bank does. It helps us compete.
It's not just big businesses--GE, Boeing. It is also that every office in the Congress receives a letter once a month from the Export-Import Bank, telling us of the companies that got that service in our districts. Nucor Steel, Brooks Rand Labs, NOVA Fisheries, American Wine Trade, Coastal Environmental Systems, International Lubricants, which are all in my district, receive the support of the Export-Import Bank. Without it, they could not have done business on their own.
Now, in the past year, not only have we supported $34 billion worth of exports and 227,000 jobs in 3,300 companies in this country, but the U.S. Treasury has gotten back $3.4 billion in fees from the loans they make.
So where are we?
Fifty countries in the world do this. China is using every tool available to it, including this one; but the House Republicans sit over there with their heads stuck in the sand, and we're about a month away from it expiring. We should increase the amount of money we allow the Export-Import Bank to use. Remember, the Export-Import Bank makes money on extremely low-risk loans to support tens of thousands of jobs in the United States. Why aren't we working on this kind of jobs legislation? Well, it's because the President asked for it. They are so determined, Mr. Speaker, to prevent the President from being reelected that they won't do what's good for American business and what's good for American workers.
This is not partisan. These small companies are all over our districts. They want to make loans. They want to make sales overseas. They need the help of this bank, and the Republican leadership sits--I don't know where they are. They're somewhere in a dark room. Somebody should turn on the light and tell them there is some stuff to be done and to get out here and pass a real bill, not this jobs cockamamie thing we're going to do in a few days about repackaging stuff we've already passed.
Source