Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I wish to address the issue of the Export-Import Bank reauthorization, if I might, for a few moments. My colleague, the Senator from the State of Maine, has just spoken to it, and I expect my colleague from the State of North Dakota will also follow along the same lines. I wish to join with my colleagues here today in standing up for American manufacturing and in standing up for American businesses that rely on the Export-Import Bank for the critical financing they need to export their products to the markets of the world. Many of us have said the same thing on this floor over the weeks or months since its authorization expired.

It is striking to me that because of the views of a few Members of the House and Senate, this valuable tool which has helped American companies sell their goods around the world for more than 80 years has been allowed to expire. As we just heard from the Senator from Maine, the Export-Import Bank actually operates at no cost to the taxpayer, and it is something that has helped American businesses sell almost $30 billion in goods and supported more than 150,000 American jobs last year alone. So I really think the opposition to the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank is badly misguided. It is my hope that we will find some bipartisan path toward the restoration of this critical tool.

In my first 4 years in the Senate, I was the chair of the Africa subcommittee on the Foreign Relations Committee, and I took advantage of that opportunity to learn a great deal more about this vast continent with 54 countries and the opportunities it provides for American companies to sell their exported products to their growing markets.

Most folks think of the Export-Import Bank as principally providing financing for a few very large companies--companies such as General Electric and Boeing--and it does provide essential financing for their export sales, but those big companies also have enormous supplier chains that employ folks all over the country. I could focus today on the important sales that Boeing and GE have made to Africa and its growing market, but I wish to focus on a very small company with an important story that I think helps illuminate why Ex-Im financing matters.

This little company is called Acrow Bridge. Although it is headquartered in New Jersey, it has a manufacturing plant right near Lewisburg, PA. That plant rolls out steel bridges. It is in Milton, PA. It has been making bridges from the same model Patton's troops used as they rolled across France and Germany during the Second World War, modular bridges that are easy to install in remote places without a whole lot of infrastructure support.

Why does that matter? Because they recently successfully competed for big contracts to sell hundreds of bridges to areas in Africa, including countries like Cameroon or Zambia that badly need infrastructure.

Who are their competitors? Comparable companies from China and from Europe that are also seeking to sell into these growing markets.

Why do I care? I am from Delaware. I care about manufacturing all over this country, but this Acrow Bridge company ships their bridges from Pennsylvania to Delaware, where, in New Castle, the Voigt & Schweitzer hot dip galvanizing company takes each bridge and dips it in zinc and galvanizes it before it is put on a ship and sent off to places all over the world. Voigt & Schweitzer doesn't employ thousands of people, but it employs dozens of people. Acrow Bridge in Milton, PA, doesn't employ thousands of people, but it employs dozens of people. Manufacturing across our country critically depends on access to export markets.

I recently had a chance to meet up with the Acrow Bridge export sales specialist at a conference in Gabon in Africa. He was alarmed that in the absence of Ex-Im financing, his key competitors are much more likely to succeed in the next contract and the next contract and the next contract.

We folks are just unilaterally disarming here in the fight to access the growing markets of the world, and I can't for the life of me fathom why we have done this. As my colleague from Maine said, if there are issues with the Ex-Im Bank, put them on the floor, put them on the table, and let's address them.

In my experience, when the Bank makes a loan to American businesses, it is not replacing private capital that would otherwise have been making that loan. Most often, it supplements private capital or makes a private bank more inclined to put up its own. And more often than not, Ex-Im serves as the lender of last resort, especially when you are financing sales into risky, growing markets in countries like Cameroon, Zambia, or elsewhere in Africa.

I don't think the Export-Import Bank is doing something best left to the private sector; I think it picks up where the private sector leaves off and it provides key financing to level the global playing field and make it possible for our manufacturers, for our small businesses to compete around the world.

Frankly, most of our competitors have much more robust financing available for their export sales than the Export-Import Bank provides. I just can't fathom why we would allow American businesses to be put at such a key competitive disadvantage. It is my real hope that before it is too late, we will take up and reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.

There were disappointing and concerning announcements just in recent weeks by General Electric and by Boeing that they are already moving employment overseas or they are seriously considering it. GE just announced they are moving a turboprop engine development center to Europe because they can't remain competitive in the absence of Ex-Im financing. That is going to cause the loss of 500 jobs in a community here in America. And Boeing has made even more concerning announcements.

I think it is critical that we in Congress come together and show that we care about American jobs and that we care about fighting for American manufacturers because we recognize that 95 percent of the opportunity in the world is in the growing sectors that are represented by the export markets of the world.

It is my hope that we can find a way through this, that the unwillingness to reopen the Bank, which is sending the wrong message to the world markets, is something we can come together and address. At a time when our economy is gaining steam and Americans are going back to work, we need to continue to help American companies to compete around the world, not make it harder. So I think we should stop playing politics with American jobs, stop pursuing an ideological agenda, and reauthorize the Export-Import Bank immediately.

Thank you.

With that, I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source