Political Quotes

“Thank you, Madam Chair. Since 2003, the Defense Department reports that it has spent approximately $1.3 billion to buy non-combat vehicles from foreign vehicle manufacturers. Now you may ask, why is that? We have a law on the books that's called the Buy American Act, and it generally requires that when we are buying items for use by the U.S. military and they are available here in the United States that they should be bought from U.S. companies. It makes a lot of sense. If we're going to be spending billions of dollars in taxpayer money, we should make sure that it goes to fund U.S. manufacturers and U.S. jobs. But here's the problem. There are a number of loopholes, a growing number of exceptions to the Buy America law. The biggest is this one. One of the exceptions says that if you are buying a particular good for use outside of the United States, you don't have to comply with the Buy America clause at all. Well, that becomes a pretty enormous, truck- sized loophole when we are fighting two wars abroad, because much of what we are purchasing goes immediately to foreign companies. So you have a situation where non-combat vehicles, light trucks, ambulances, buses, motorcycles, vehicles that are made by a multitude of American manufacturers, are now being bought overseas and our taxpayer dollars are going to foreign European and Asian vehicle manufacturers and into the pockets of foreign workers. This is a much bigger problem than just this one category of spending.…”