Export-Import Bank

Floor Speech

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam Speaker, last summer more than 100 businesses attended a forum I held in Schaumburg, Illinois, to learn more about the benefits of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Since then, businesses in my district have told me time and again how the bank's services keep them competitive in the global marketplace and create good-paying American jobs. They know we need to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank now.

For decades, the Export-Import Bank has helped American exporters sell their products overseas. It provides their financing, credit, and insurance to grow their businesses abroad when other options are simply not available. Last year, these investments led to $37.4 billion in exports that created more than 200,000 jobs right here in America.

This week, a USA Today editorial stated:

One of the most vexing economic developments in recent decades has been the decline in manufacturing jobs. An industry that employed nearly 25 percent of the workforce in the 1970s today accounts for only 7.8 percent ..... The loss of these jobs has reduced opportunities for people without a college degree to move into the middle class.

Madam Speaker, we can't abandon the American manufacturing and the American middle class. Bring up the bill I helped introduce, H.R. 4950, and let's reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.

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