Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015--Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I rise to express my support for the Export-Import Bank and to encourage my colleagues in the Senate to take up and pass bipartisan legislation scheduled for consideration in the House next week that would reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank until September 30, 2019.
The Export-Import Bank helps American companies export their goods and services across the globe, helping businesses grow and creating more demand for American manufactured goods and agricultural products. Over its 80-year history, the Ex-Im Bank has provided loans to help businesses start exporting, open new markets, and access new customers. The Bank provides insurance to help businesses protect their bottom lines if a foreign buyer fails to pay and works with private lenders to fill gaps in financing that helps close deals that simply would never happen without its support. Most importantly, the Ex-Im Bank does all of this at no cost to the taxpayers. In fact, it makes money. Just last year, the Bank generated a $675 million surplus to help reduce the deficit.
The Ex-Im Bank helps level the playing field for American companies in a tough global market. Last year it supported more than $27.4 billion in U.S. exports and 164,000 jobs. More than $10 billion of that total--nearly 40 percent--represented exports by small businesses. The Ex-Im Bank is dedicated to serving small businesses in Michigan and across the country. Ninety percent of its overall transactions directly supported small businesses, including many that served suppliers for large companies.
In 2013, I was proud to attend the opening of Ex-Im Bank's regional export finance center in Detroit with Governor Snyder and my colleague Senator Stabenow and Congressman John Dingell. In Michigan alone, the Bank has supported 229 exporter businesses selling $11 billion worth of goods to places such as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Canada. This support is particularly important for our manufacturing industry, including motor vehicles and parts, machinery and chemicals--all vital sectors to our economy.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to visit a Michigan business, Mill Steel Company in Grand Rapids, which works with the Ex-Im Bank to export its products. Mill Steel is one of North America's premier flat-rolled steel companies. It is also a family-owned business that wanted to make Michigan products and hire Michigan workers. Mill Steel sells and ships its steel to auto suppliers in Mexico and Canada. The loan guarantees provided by the Ex-Im Bank reduce Mill Steel's risk when exporting to foreign buyers, providing certainty and allowing them to continue hiring new employees and providing good-paying jobs in Michigan.
Unfortunately, over the summer, despite bipartisan support for reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank, a small, ideologically driven minority in Congress allowed the charter for the Export-Import Bank of the United States to expire, risking billions of dollars in exports, hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and putting our country at an economic disadvantage in a competitive global marketplace while also increasing the Federal deficit. The failure of Congress to act on this commonsense Federal program endangers jobs in Michigan and is simply unacceptable. General Electric has a plant in Michigan that employees 1,400 Michiganians. Over the summer, GE announced that it plans to relocate over 300 jobs from Wisconsin to Canada as a result of the Ex-Im Bank closing its doors. When this happened, my office was flooded with inquiries from a number of constituents concerned about what would happen to their communities and their own job security if a similar decision was made in Michigan. In the months since Ex-Im Bank's authorization has lapsed, GE has signed deals with export credit agencies in competitor foreign nations, creating jobs abroad instead of right here in the United States.
As a Senator from a State with world-class engineering and manufacturing talent, I am frankly appalled by these developments, especially when we have already seen the benefits that the Bank has produced for Michigan's economy and workers in my State as well as across the country.
The work done by the Ex-Im Bank is especially critical to Michigan manufacturers who fight to compete with countries using extreme and unfair measures such as direct subsidies or currency manipulation to boost their own manufacturing sectors. According to Ex-Im Bank's most recent annual report, there are 85 other competing foreign-sponsored export credit agencies helping their own domestic companies better compete on the global stage. Other countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany, use their own export credit agencies to boost their country's exports.
China, in fact, provided more financing through its export credit agency in the last 2 years--approximately $670 billion--than our own Ex-Im Bank has offered in its entire 81-year history. These export financings are expected to significantly increase in coming years, which means that American firms and workers could fall further behind if we do not act now.
Without our own Export-Import Bank, American businesses will struggle to compete overseas and our economy will suffer. As global competition intensifies, it simply makes no sense to engage in unilateral disarmament. We must stop the self-inflicted wounds on our economy. We must pledge to our constituents that we will first do no harm, and we must stop letting ideology impair our economic growth.
I am pleased that a bipartisan, bicameral group of Senators and Representatives are saying that enough is enough, and are working to move a reauthorization forward. I am looking forward to working with them to get this done as soon as possible. Too much time has already been wasted, and too many jobs have already been jeopardized. We have to get back to the business of working together to find commonsense solutions to help, not hamper, our economic growth in America. Passing a long-term reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank is a great way to start.
Once the House passes the reauthorization next week, I urge my colleagues in the Senate to schedule a vote as soon as possible. We know we have the votes. The legislation the House will soon consider is identical to an amendment passed by the Senate with a vote of 64 to 29 in July while considering the long-term highway bill. We should do this now because there is not a moment to lose. American jobs hang in the balance.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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