Export-Import Bank Reform and Reauthorization Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I thank the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, have you ever had one of those instances in which you are listening and you are trying to find a way to say, ``I believe much of the argument we are hearing here is intellectually disingenuous''?

The fact of the matter is every year there are trillions and trillions of dollars of surety and import-export credit that moves through the markets, and it doesn't have a government guarantee. It does not have a guarantee from our taxpayers.

Look, this institution still has a $32 million loan from pre-Castro Cuba on their books. When they tell you ``Oh, we have this tiny number of charge-offs,'' what they are telling you is a lie.

Do you remember the hearings we had when we had the discussions as to what their impairments were? They just stared back at you because they didn't want to have that discussion, because every other financial institution has to honestly say, ``Here are our impairments. On this one, it was oil. We only had this level of charge-off.'' What they are not telling you is that they are still carrying loans that have sat on their books, without a payment, for 50 years.

To every citizen of this country, understand that, when this piece of legislation passes, you have just been put on the hook. Your credit has just been put on the hook for these types of loans.

That is what you intend to do to your taxpayers? That is what you are going to do to your constituencies?

This piece of legislation also purports to have reforms in it. As for the reforms, if they are not already doing these things, they should be locked up already because much of this is the most basic level that you would expect from any financial institution.

Then I come to another tab from the GAO and see repeat, after repeat, after repeat where it has already been the law and they have been ignoring it. Yet we are going to re-charter them again--an organization to which we are going to claim we are providing reforms when they are the very reforms from the last time we did this that they did not follow.

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