Export-Import Bank

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my friend from Washington and my friend from Tennessee for organizing this exceptionally important discussion tonight.

I think the case, from a national standpoint, in terms of maintaining the Ex-Im or the Export-Import Bank, is really almost uncontestable. It is not a new institution. It has been around well over 80 years. It is not a unique institution.

As has been mentioned here on the floor several times, literally dozens of other countries have a similar tool in their toolbox to facilitate exports.

It has not cost the American taxpayer a dime during the course of its existence. It has actually made billions of dollars back, indeed, since 2007, $2.8 billion last year alone, a billion dollars extra to the United States Treasury.

What it has done and what every American ought to be interested in is it creates thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs for our fellow Americans competing in the international marketplace.

Now, I can talk about some big companies that have a presence in my State that have been enormously well served by the Ex-Im Bank. Boeing aircraft, we have almost 3,000 Boeing jobs in Oklahoma. That is important to us, and we are very proud to have them. Halliburton, historically founded in California, headquartered now in Texas, but their largest machinery production facility is in my district in Duncan, Oklahoma--1,500 jobs. Those are real Oklahomans going to work.

What impresses me the most is the opportunities that the Export-Import Bank have created for small companies to get into the international marketplace. The Export-Import Bank in

Oklahoma in recent years has helped 129 exporting firms; 87 of those, over two-thirds, are small businesses, and that has made a difference in small communities.
The small business is the bedrock of the American economy, and Ex-Im helps them open markets that they would never have had an opportunity to participate in, absent that particular mechanism. Don't take my word for it.

Here is a story from a third-generation Oklahoma company about how the Export-Import Bank has been able to help them. The Mills Machine Company operating in Shawnee, Oklahoma, just outside my district but in the district next to it, has been in business since 1908--over 100 years. It makes drill bits, augers, and other tools for water construction in geothermal industries.

According to the current president, Chuck Mills, who is actually the third generation in the family to run the company--his grandfather started it; his father maintained it, and he is now operating it. He was the first one to think about operating overseas.

How does a small company in the middle of Oklahoma identify and finance overseas sales? He figured out the Export-Import Bank would be the way to open the door for him to create jobs for his employees in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Today, the Export-Import Bank provides credit

insurance when his company is selling their products abroad, which is awfully necessary because some of those individual items, while they sound mundane, cost up to $30,000 apiece. That is a lot of risk for a small company.

Access to the Ex-Im Bank has allowed the Mills Machine Company to actually increase their exports overseas by 20 percent. Now, when you are a company of 20-30 employees, 20 percent is five or six jobs that literally would not have been there absent the services of this Bank.

The Export-Import Bank actually allows our companies to compete in the global marketplace where countries often directly subsidize or own the means of productions.

We don't have a free market today in every way. Our competitors have this tool. They use this tool aggressively. We need to have the ability to counter them, when necessary, with the Export-Import Bank.

I want to encourage my colleagues to support this bill to understand how essential it is to some of--not just the biggest, but some of the smallest exporters in the American economy and how many thousands of jobs it creates.

Remember, it has never cost the taxpayers of the United States of America a single dime. It has always put billions of dollars, over time, into our Treasury. Most importantly, there are thousands of Americans working today thanks to what the Export-Import Bank has done to facilitate the export of American products into the international marketplace.

I want to urge my colleagues to support the reauthorization of this important institution.

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