CPSC Reform Act--Resumed

Floor Speech

CPSC REFORM ACT--RESUMED -- (Senate - March 06, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I understand we are working toward final passage on the bill. I congratulate the Senator from Arkansas for the tremendous job he has done on this legislation. While everybody is putting together the last of this bill, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 8 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

OUTSOURCING AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I have come to the floor this afternoon because we have to wake up the country. We are at risk of losing a major part of our aerospace industry to the Europeans forever.

I am outraged the Pentagon is not only going to stand by and let it happen, but it is the Pentagon itself that made the decision in the first place. I am referring, of course, to the Air Force's decision last Friday to award one of the largest military contracts in history to the French company Airbus over the American company Boeing. With this $40 billion contract, our Air Force is beginning the process of rebuilding our aerial refueling tanker fleet, and the planes we are purchasing are going to be used for the next 30 years or more.

As we learn more about this decision, I have to say I grow more and more astounded at the shortsightedness. As I speak today, Airbus does not actually supply this military capacity to any government. The tanker that the administration wants Airbus to build is unproven. In fact, in my home State of Washington, the machinists call it a paper airplane because it only exists on paper. Right now, the company that supplies those real planes is Boeing, and it has built them for almost 50 years. Up until now, we have in this country controlled our own military refueling capabilities, but with this decision we are now handing Airbus that control.

What makes this so disturbing is we are now outsourcing those jobs to a company that has spent years blatantly working to dismantle our American aerospace companies. Airbus is controlled by foreign governments which follow the social welfare model. Those countries subsidize Airbus, allowing it to sell planes at discounted rates, as long as it creates jobs for European workers.

Our Government is concerned enough about that practice that we have a WTO case pending at the EU, but apparently that does not matter to the administration, because by giving Airbus this contract, we are laying out the welcome mat to walk all over our military production capability. What is the incentive to buy an American tanker if they can get an import at fire-sale prices? With this contract, we are allowing Airbus to take over our military technology, and we are actually paying them to do it.

Airbus has now launched a very slick marketing campaign to try to convince us in Congress and the public that this decision will actually be good for the United States. I spoke on the floor at length yesterday about Airbus's long history of exaggerating the number of jobs it has produced, and it is very interesting that while Airbus has put its supporters on radio and TV over here--and you have heard them--to talk about how excited they are about the number of U.S. jobs this deal is going to create, the news in Europe is about 180 degrees different. Reuters ran an article, the dateline out of Paris yesterday, reporting that Airbus's parent company, EADS, was scrambling over there to clarify that no jobs would be relocated from Europe to the United States. And a British publication earlier this week reported that almost all of the construction work will be done in Europe and then Airbus will fly that plane to the United States for ``finishing.''

If Boeing had won the contract, it would have created 44,000 real United States jobs. By awarding this contract to Airbus, the U.S. Government is leading those jobs to the guillotine.

The most frustrating part about all of this is the Air Force has insisted on defending their decision. Yesterday, according to the Associated Press and other news outlets, one official testified in the House that the Pentagon did not have to consider the location of assembly and manufacturing facilities for those planes; all it needed was a promise by Airbus that it would team with Northrop Grumman and U.S. suppliers. In other words, the Air Force did not consider at all Airbus's record of playing unfair on trade. It did not consider at all the number of jobs we will certainly lose because of this contract. And it did not consider at all what this would mean for our ability to produce our own military technology.

When we are at war across the globe, we should at least consider what it means to give a company owned by a foreign government control over our military technology, and I think we should do it before we finalize this deal.

Airbus and EADS have already given us plenty of reason to worry about how hard they will work to protect our security interests. Let me give a couple of examples. Back in 2005, EADS, the parent company of Airbus, was caught trying to sell military helicopters to Iran. And in 2006, EADS tried to sell transport and patrol planes to Venezuela. That is a circumvention of U.S. law.

Suppose in the future that Europe and the United States have a major disagreement over foreign policy. Do we want France or any other country to have the ability to slow down our military capacity because it does not like our policies?

That is a serious question we should consider. With one contract, we could wipe out 50 years of experience of aerospace in the United States, and once it is gone we are not going to get it back. It is not going to come back. Shouldn't we in Congress at least have a serious debate about this before we give it all away?

I yield the floor.

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