Export-Import Bank

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, the greatest threat to our
national security is our national debt. It is the number one issue
facing our country right now and one of the primary reasons I sought to
serve in this body. I have often said that the only way that we are
ever going to balance our budget, the only way that we are ever going
to retire our national debt is by three things: first of all, we have
got to cut spending; secondly, we have got to have entitlement reform;
and, thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we have got to grow our way
out of this. The Ex-Im Bank helps us to do that.

As a small-business man, having owned three independent retail
pharmacies for the last 27 years, I understand the value in business of
cutting costs and increasing revenues. It is important. You have to
both cut costs and increase revenues, and you have to grow your
business.

The Ex-Im Bank helps us to increase revenues. It helps us to retire
our national debt. First of all, the Ex-Im Bank has returned money to
the Treasury in the form of revenues it generates from loan interest
and fees. Last year alone, the Bank generated a surplus of $675
million.

Secondly, and most importantly, the Ex-Im Bank encourages economic
growth by supporting the purchase of American-made goods around the
world. These purchases sustain thousands of American companies who rely
on exports and put food on the table of hard-working men and women
employed by them.

In my district alone, there are 19 companies that in recent years
have utilized the Ex-Im Bank to export goods overseas. These companies
range from Gulfstream, a leading manufacturer of aircraft, to Strength
of Nature, a company founded by immigrants who fled the Castro regime
and started a company that now exports many of their goods to the
Caribbean and to Africa.

The Ex-Im Bank helps businesses, big and small, across America to
compete with the competitors abroad by leveling the playing field. With
over 60 government export credit agencies currently active around the world,
including every modern industrialized economy, allowing the Bank to
expire is tantamount to unilaterally disarming ourselves in the
competition for big contracts around the globe.

If a company cannot get financing to buy Gulfstream manufactured in
Savannah, Georgia, they will go to Canada, which actively promotes
Bombardier, or Brazil, which does the same for its Embraer jets. If
they can't get a Caterpillar excavator made in Athens, Georgia, they
will go to Japan to buy a Komatsu. If they can't get access to an AGCO
tractor headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, they will go to India to buy
Mahindra.

Mr. Speaker, again, as a small-business owner myself, I know that
American companies can compete when the playing field is level. In a
perfect world, we wouldn't need an Ex-Im Bank, but we don't live in a
perfect world. Instead of leveling the playing field for American
businesses, those who would shutter the Bank are stacking the deck
against them.

Mr. Speaker, unilaterally closing the Bank would expose our economy
to a devastating blow at a time when we can least afford it. It would
also further erode our global competitiveness and America's influence
around the globe.

While we stand here debating the future of the Ex-Im Bank, our
competitors are leveraging their own versions of their export-import
banks to increase their market shares abroad. Every minute we wait,
foreign countries and companies are expanding. If we don't fill the
market need, countries like Russia and China will, and with it, the
influence of their regimes is on the rise. They relish in every day
that we wait.

Like any Federal agency, the Ex-Im Bank can and should be reformed to
make it more accountable, more efficient, more transparent. I support
reforms that would bring interest rates more in line with those found
in an open private market.

I support reforms to ensure the Bank is a true lender of last resort
for all companies by implementing measures to ensure the Bank's
customers prove that they have exhausted all their options for
financing by private lenders before seeking assistance from the Bank.
One way to do that would be to require three letters of denial as part
of an application. The Bank should also produce a report explaining why
certain businesses receive assistance by the Bank in order to provide
taxpayers with more information on exactly what the Bank is doing and
why.

Full transparency of the Bank's actions is the only way to hold it
accountable, while demonstrating the valuable role the Bank plays in
maintaining our competitiveness in global markets.

I stand here today ready to work with my colleagues to implement
these and other necessary reforms to the Ex-Im Bank, but allowing it to
expire is a disservice to the constituents that we serve.

The Ex-Im Bank not only supports America's manufacturers and the
working American families they employ, it helps to promote America's
national interests abroad. Most importantly, it helps address our
national debt, both through economic expansion and by returning its
surplus to the Treasury each year.

I want to thank my colleagues--Dan Newhouse, Stephen Fincher, and
Chris Collins--for helping to host this forum and all those working
with us to restore the Ex-Im Bank to its important function.

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