Tom Coburn: “A couple of points: No. 1, this is not just the British- owned corporation; this is a corporation owned by the British…”

“A couple of points: No. 1, this is not just the British- owned corporation; this is a corporation owned by the British Government. There is a big difference. It is not a privately held corporation. The British Government owns British Nuclear Fuels, which owns Westinghouse. If there is a subsidized loan that ought to go anywhere, it ought to come from the British, not the American taxpayers. Second, I spoke in error. It is not $100,000 per job but $1 million per job; $5 billion for 5,000 jobs is $1 million a job. That is what we are putting at risk to save 5,000 jobs. The third point I make is we are not just offering a loan subsidy and guarantee to a Westinghouse power generation subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels owned by the British Government. We are also allowing a subsidy for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that also has a large portion of this deal. What we are doing is financing just as many jobs out of the country as we are in the country. So the claim that we want to do this to save 5,000 jobs means we are going to enhance the ability of the Japanese steel manufacturers to compete with our steel manufacturers because we are going to give them a guaranteed loan to supply the steel for this facility. It makes no sense. How do we best create more jobs in this country? We trim Government spending. We cut taxes. We allow the entrepreneurs of this country, the people who have paid 14 percent more taxes this year already, to have the money with which to invest.…”