Political Quotes

“I appreciate the work that my chairman has done. I chair the Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee, the subcommittee that has jurisdiction directly over this. In the last conference when I was vice chair of that committee, we started a work group looking at various reforms that could happen, and that continued on into this term. We had a number of us on all sides of the issue that were working together. The real problem arose, though, when those of us who felt that we needed to move in a direction where we were transferring that liability from the taxpayer back to businesses--when we felt that we were proposing some of those reforms, those who were most benefiting from the program said: Absolutely not. Not a direction we can go. Cannot be a phaseout. Cannot be a sunset. Cannot be a change to make these recourse loans. Cannot make them only loans as opposed to grants. In other words, it was business as usual. It might be a good business decision to transfer business liability and risk to somebody else, but it is a bad idea to transfer that additional liability to the U.S. taxpayer. I think that we have a couple of issues in front of us, Mr. Speaker, as was talked about yesterday. First is the issue of the Ex-Im Bank and the entitlement mentality that has grown up, and that is just a symptom of it.…”