Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations The Right To Appeal Act -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, the vitally important Export-Import Bank expires at the end of June. It will be gone. If this program expires--it is not like anything else--we will have to start all over again. We will have to have hearings. We will have to have markups in both Houses. If we can extend the authorization of this, it will solve so many problems for us.

The Export-Import Bank creates jobs in our country--in the United States--by providing loans and loan guarantees so customers in foreign countries can buy our exports. An example is airplanes. I have spoken to Mr. McNerney, the head of Boeing, and one of the vital parts of their business is being able to have other countries have businesses within those countries come and want to buy their airplanes or countries that want to buy their airplanes. They have difficulty doing that without the ability of the Export-Import Bank to help raise the financing.

I greatly appreciate Senator Cantwell now bringing the attention of this body to this important program that is going to expire soon. I appreciate Senator Heitkamp for working on legislation dealing with this important issue.

The Export-Import Bank just this year sustained 165,000 jobs. It will be a lot more if there is a long-term extension of this bill. So one might think, of course, that a program such as this which supports 165,000 jobs in just 1 year would cost taxpayers an arm and a leg, a fortune, but in this case, they would be wrong. It is just the opposite. We make money on the Export-Import Bank. Over the last 10 years, the Bank has returned more than $7 billion to the U.S. Treasury. That is $7 billion the U.S. taxpayer does not have to pay because the program is so important and so successful.

A program as effective as the Export-Import Bank should have no problem getting reauthorized, but it has had a lot of trouble. As recently as 2006, the Bank's charter was extended by unanimous consent. It didn't even have a vote. But today the Export-Import Bank is in serious danger of being terminated, ended. The Senate banking committee has made no effort to bring up the Bank's reauthorization, and the majority leader doesn't have a path forward. The best, he said, is we will give you a vote on it. Giving a vote on it is meaningless.

So what has changed since just a few years ago when we extended this by unanimous consent? Why has this immensely successful program over the last few years been on the chopping block? I will tell my colleagues why. It is because the Koch brothers have decided that it needs to go. They want to get rid of it. It is part of their attack on government programs, and this is a government program. They don't care if a bank creates jobs or makes money; they simply want to get rid of it.

That is not the worst of it. Every other developed country supports their exports. China and Europe support their exports, and so do Brazil and India. They all do. But the Koch brothers don't care. They want the United States to be unilaterally disarmed. They are telling their Republican friends in Congress that the United States should just get rid of this program. They don't care that this will put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage, and that is an understatement. They don't care that this will cost U.S. jobs, and that is an understatement. They don't even care that this will put a larger burden on taxpayers to have to make up the lost revenue. All the Koch brothers care about is maintaining their warped, illogical view of taking down a government program and making more money for their massive business interests.

I encourage my colleagues to reject this misguided view. Let's stop shooting ourselves in the foot. Let's pass a long-term extension of the Export-Import Bank. On this bill, the trade bill--if it became part of the trade bill, it would be signed into law. The President loves the Export-Import Bank. He said so publicly. We have been trying to get this done, but now the Republicans have said no thanks because their guiding light, the Koch brothers, don't like it because it is a government program.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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