Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank
Floor Speech
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Minnesota for her work and her leadership position in the Senate and for focusing on economic policy and constantly doing the research and legwork on how our economy is moving forward and what key essentials we need to move forward. The fact that she is here this morning to speak about the Export-Import Bank and the fact that the lapse of the Bank itself is causing us great economic challenge--I certainly very much appreciate everything she is doing. She comes from a State that has businesses that are exporters. Minnesota has a lot of exporters, so she knows this is causing a big challenge.
I know my colleague Senator Heitkamp, who is an original sponsor of this legislation, is speaking out on this issue as well. I think Senator McCaskill may be joining us this morning.
I don't know if the American people know, but many of our colleagues know that the Export-Import Bank is tooled to help U.S. manufacturers export products overseas by financing the deals--not really financing them so much as basically helping private banks finance them when the banks won't take all the risk. The program works just like the SBA--the Small Business Administration--does to help small businesses with bank financing. This helps businesses that are trying to export their products overseas get financing where these developing countries may not have banks to do that. So it has expired, which means it is cutting off economic opportunity here in the United States to grow jobs.
When we think about it, with 90 percent of consumers living outside of the United States, the biggest economic opportunity for our country is to sell those consumers products that the United States of America makes. But we have to have financing for developing countries.
There are 478 Ex-Im Bank guarantees and credit insurance policies worth $3.2 billion set to expire October 1. If we don't quickly reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, that money will be lost. And those are programs that are already underway. As this shows, there are 116 pending deals--deals we could do, deals we could get approved. That would be basically $9.3 billion in revenue to those companies, and obviously companies could grow their economic bottom line.
In my visits with companies in the State of Washington, I have seen that a lot of businesses are looking at maybe 20 percent of their revenues coming from overseas markets, so having the Ex-Im Bank helps them reach new market opportunities. Every time I talk to them--what happens if this program goes away and you can't get financing? Most of them will say: That 20 percent of our business will result in layoffs--those people who are associated with that business.
So right now what we need to do is to help these businesses that are in their fourth quarter have the certainty and guarantee that we are going to compete on the playing field of what is called a global economy. If you are not interested in that, if you think we are just going to make U.S. products and sell them to U.S. people, I guess that could be your strategy. I think it is a wrongheaded strategy.
So we are here today to talk about how this is impacting small businesses, big businesses, and what we need to do to get this reauthorized.
Why are we here this morning? Because yesterday we heard news from a major manufacturer that basically talked specifically about what is going to happen. It is not that the Koch brothers are going to win or the Heritage Foundation is going to win; it is that companies such as GE and others are going to ship their jobs overseas so they can get financing for the manufactured products they make. So what happened? GE basically has said it has been forced to move 500 jobs from the U.S. to France, China, and Hungary. Why? Why are they moving jobs overseas? Because they still have a credit agency. France has one and is willing to provide export financing as a major component of wind turbines that would otherwise have been built in the United States. Altogether, GE has $11 billion in contracts that require export credit agency support. So they are going to meet customer demand.
I worked in business for 5 years. I know what it is like to build and ship a product to meet customer demand. They cannot sit around and wait for Congress to stop catering to special interests to get their customer applications filled. They either do it or they lose business. And that is what is happening today--the American economy is losing business because people here are playing politics with an important tool that helps U.S. manufacturers.
GE isn't the only one. Boeing is also facing job loss. On July 31, Boeing announced that it had lost a contract for communications satellite ABS-8, which will provide service to millions of people in the Asia-Pacific region. We know this is important business, satellite communication. Think about the developing world in places such as the Pacific islands, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea. This company specifically cited Ex-Im's lapse as the reason they did something else besides going with a U.S. manufacturer. These satellites will still be launched. There will be massive growth in the middle class of Asia that demands it, and they will continue to get a product. It just won't be from a U.S. manufacturer. Why? Because we have chosen to let the Export-Import Bank fail.
All in all, this Export-Import Bank is on track to support 58,000 fewer jobs in 2015--jobs that, if they were able to operate, they would be able to continue. So the fact is that Boeing and GE may be hurting, but they will come up with strategies that work well for them because that is what you do when you are a big company--you figure out how to compete. But the small businesses in America that might be the job engine of growth for the future are not so easily able to move their company or move overseas to get the financing. For example, since 2007 Export-Import Bank has supported more than 230 business exporters in the State of Washington. Two thirds of those are small businesses. So these companies aren't going to be able to all of a sudden stop what they are doing, go to France or go to another country, and start a manufacturing facility just to get credit agency support. The damage that is being done to small businesses in America right now is acute, and we need to make sure we get this export agency reauthorized.
An example of this: My colleague Senator Merkley and I visited Bob's Red Mill. I think that about everybody in America, if they don't know Bob's Red Mill, knows they have bought a product from Bob's Red Mill when they have gone and bought oatmeal or grains. It has grown their export revenue about 35 percent since they started working with the Export-Import Bank in 2012. Think about that: Those consumers--90 percent outside of the United States--want to basically consume more products like Bob's Red Mill, a great product. I personally think these are the kinds of things the United States ought to be focusing on. We are still number one in agriculture. We still should be focused on shipping agriculture products to developing markets around the world. This is one of the biggest and easiest opportunities, feeding the world with a product like Bob's Red Mill. But no, no, no. Bob's Red Mill will lose business because they will not have an export authority. I doubt that Bob at his age--a great man, a very vibrant guy at 80-some years old--is going to start a business somewhere else in Europe or in Africa just to export to that market and try to get the financing.
Texas-based Air Tractor will lose up to 25 percent of their sales because the Export-Import Bank is stopping. Pennsylvania-based Precision Custom Components, which manufactures parts for the nuclear industry, says it has over 100 jobs linked to their ability to service people with export-import financing.
This is a loss of real jobs. When people talk about what we are dealing with in our fiscal crisis--the fact that people are talking about shutting down Government--to me, if you want to be a good fiscal steward, then reinstitute the Export-Import Bank.
In 2014 alone, Export-Import Bank paid $675 million into our Treasury. That is deficit reduction. In fact, in the previous 5 years, it had generated somewhere around $5 billion in deficit reduction. Not only are we taking away a key tool, where are you going to plug the hole in our budget from the hundreds of millions of dollars this year--to say nothing of next year and the next year--that you don't have from killing the Export-Import Bank? People need to realize, these people--small businesses, big organizations seeking financing--have to pay a fee. That fee generates revenue. That revenue is used to pay down the Federal deficit. Not only do we create jobs and not only do we reach market access, we actually have a government program that is helping us pay down the Federal deficit.
Why would you not want to reinstitute that? The good news is that the Senate voted to do that. From what I hear, there are enough people in the House of Representatives. People have continued to hold this program hostage because people are anxious about the politics of the Heritage Foundation, the Koch brothers, or people sending out emails or challenging them when in reality you just need to stand up and speak for the fact that you want U.S. job creation, and you believe that U.S. manufacturers making and building a product and selling it overseas is a winning economic strategy for the United States of America. It is. To boot, it pays down the deficit. We know that American businesses are obviously working hard to try to communicate this. Everybody from the manufacturers association to individual workforce organizations is trying to express this. I know my colleague Senator Heitkamp has been working very hard on this on the banking committee.
With just a short period of time left before whatever this proposal is to shut down the government, which I certainly don't support, we have to say to our colleagues that you either have to get this on the highway bill--which it is as part of a package that we passed out of the Senate--and get either the package that was passed here in the Senate passed by the House or come up with another vehicle that gets this done, as my colleague from Minnesota just suggested, on the continuing resolution or some other bill so that we actually know we are giving American businesses the opportunity to continue to compete.
I hope we will get a long-term solution here. The fact that we have sent this message around the United States and the world--that there is no longer financing available--has really hurt our competitive opportunity at a time when America needs to embrace the fact that there is so much business in these developing middle-class markets around the globe.
You can sit here and trade away our opportunity to compete by saying I don't want U.S. job creation or deficit reduction. Instead, I want to ship jobs overseas. I don't get the strategy. I don't get what someone thinks is smart about allowing U.S. jobs to be shipped overseas just because they can't get financing here. If the market were willing to take those risks without some of the security put forth here, obviously people would want to see that. But that is not happening because if you are selling grain silos like we are to African nations, there is no bank there that is financing that deal. If you are selling product to Asian countries that are just developing, whether it is seafood or whether it is grain like Bob's Red Mill, they are not always able to get financing. This is a way for the United States to win. All we have to do is embrace this and make sure that we pass the Export-Import Bank as soon as possible.
I yield the floor.
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