Political Quotes

“I appreciate Mr. McHenry yielding to me, and I rise today in opposition to H.R. 4863, the United States Export Finance Agency Act. According to its charter, the mission of the Export-Import Bank is to ``contribute to maintaining or increasing employment of United States workers'' by subsidizing the export of U.S. goods and services to foreign markets. Over the years, Congress has amended Ex-Im's charter to reflect numerous congressional interests regarding lending practices, transparency, and foreign policy objectives, so much so, that the Bank's charter has grown from four pages at its inception to more than 150 pages now, and with that expansion, we have seen the Bank expand its portfolio to a staggering $135 billion. Well, each reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank has afforded Congress the opportunity to revisit the charter and to work for reform and to modernize the Bank appropriately. However, this flawed partisan proposal that we have before us today fails to make any meaningful reforms to the Export-Import Bank. Now, despite the claims that you are hearing across the aisle about the company not being able to do business with China and Russia, this simply isn't the fact. In fact, I had an amendment, two amendments, that would have actually not allowed the bank to deal with state-owned enterprises in China and in Russia. Now, why? Because of this: the human rights record in China is deplorable.…”