Jim Bunning: “I rise today to introduce a number of bills to provide for relief from duties. It is my intention that some or all of…”

“I rise today to introduce a number of bills to provide for relief from duties. It is my intention that some or all of these duty suspension bills will eventually be included in the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, MTB, that the Senate Finance Committee is expected to consider this year. As the members of the Senate are aware, Congress on occasion passes a bill, known as the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill or MTB, as a vehicle for enacting pending non-controversial duty suspensions. The rules for the inclusion of a duty suspension in the MTB are straight forward. First and foremost, in order to be included in the MTB, a bill must be non- controversial. A bill will be controversial if it is objected to by a domestic producer of the product for which the duty reduction is being sought. Secondly, the cost for each bill must amount to less than $500,000 of lost revenue per year. As my colleagues are aware, the MTB provides an opportunity to temporarily eliminate or reduce duties on narrowly defined products that are imported into the United States because there is not available domestic source for the products. These duty suspensions reduce input costs for U.S. businesses and thus ultimately increase the competitiveness of their products. I have been approached by a number of manufacturers in Kentucky that use imported inputs while making their products.…”