Providing for Consideration of H.R. 597, Reform Exports and Expand the American Economy Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman.
I hope you are all listening to some of the use of the language. I appreciated the history lesson. But has it been lost on you, the irony part of this discussion that, hey, we are going to do a discharge petition, which is part of the rules, because we don't feel we are having a voice. Oh, by the way, we are going to draft a rule--draft a rule--that you can't offer amendments, that you can't have a discussion.
For those of us who have worked on this issue for years, who have sat through dozens of hearings in multiple years, who actually have things we believe that make it better, the brilliance here is lock it down. So you are going to complain that you are not being treated fairly, and then the answer to not being treated fairly is, let's write a rule that no one gets a voice, that it is purely up or down. Is that lost on anyone here?
The reality of it is the vast majority of the trade from this country has access to surety bonds and trade credit. It is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that actually asks for a taxpayer subsidy, a taxpayer guarantee. If you wanted to solve this problem tomorrow, you could recharter the Ex-Im Bank so that it continues to exist but get the taxpayers off the hook and let them do just as now Fannie and Freddie are trying to do where they buy their reinsurance in the market.
There are solutions here, if I was allowed to offer an amendment. But you have all chosen to write a rule that keeps those of us who have worked on this issue for years from being able to have that discussion. Is that irony lost on anyone here?
You know there is a better way to do this than extending this type of crony capitalism and leaving our taxpayers on the hook for hours and hours of hearings we have had where you have heard the bad acts that are going on in this agency--the fraud, the mis-accounting.
Why are we going to let that move forward? Because if you have read the reforms that are in here, you would understand they already should be doing these. It is an outrage they are not.
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