Export-Import Bank

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, one, I want to thank my colleague, Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota, of the Joint Economic Committee, for making the case on why the Ex-Im Bank is a good government program essential to creating jobs in America from export sales.

Boeing is in South Carolina; they are in Washington. Senator Cantwell has been a champion of this issue as long as I have been around. Now that Boeing is making 787s in South Carolina, I will just put this on the table: 8 out of 10 787s made in South Carolina are Ex-Im financed. We are competing in the wide-body market with countries such as France; China will be getting in this market. Every competitor of Boeing--GE makes gas turbines in Greenville. Most of those are sold in the Mideast through Ex-Im financing. Every competitor of these two large companies in South Carolina has an Ex-Im Bank.

So to my colleagues in the House, I think I am a pretty conservative guy, but I am also practical. Why in the world would we shut our bank down when China is growing their bank? The Chinese would support closing the Ex-Im Bank in America; so would the French; so would the Canadians; so would the British. If you really want to give the American economy a kick in the wrong place, shut our bank down and allow the other countries that compete with us to keep theirs open.

There is plenty of waste in the government. So we pick one program that is small in number, in terms of actual volume that makes money for the Treasury and creates hundreds of thousands of job opportunities. This is smart conservatism? This is what conservatism has come to be, that you take a program--that allows American companies to compete in the international market, that makes money for the American taxpayer--and you shut it down just to prove to people you are ideologically pure? That is not conservatism. That is crazy, and we are not going to let it happen.

To my Democratic friends, we should have reauthorized this a long time ago in a process befitting the Senate. There is well over half of my conference ready to vote for reforms on the Ex-Im Bank, but we are not doing anything in this body, and you are not going to pick our amendments. So there is plenty of blame to go around.

I hope we are smart enough as a House and a Senate to get this right, not to shut down the Ex-Im Bank that makes money for the taxpayer, creates thousands of American jobs, for some ideological reason disconnected with reality.

China would love this. France would love this. When it comes to my State, it would be devastating to the small businesses that benefit from Ex-Im financing. If you can close their banks down, count me in, we will close ours. But I will be damned if we are going to close ours when they have theirs up and running to put people out of work in my State and all over this country when you are talking about the best-paying jobs in America.

I look forward to a further discussion on this topic.

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