Tom Coburn: “I understand we are competing in the global economy and the French or the Russians are going to subsidize it, but the…”

“I understand we are competing in the global economy and the French or the Russians are going to subsidize it, but the fact is this is a very low interest rate. We are borrowing money from China today and paying over 4 percent and we are going to finance this at less than that, so the cost to the taxpayer is real. There is a real cost to the American taxpayer. It is the difference between at what rate they invest and the interest rate we pay to them and at what rate we are going to subsidize this loan. So there is a cost to the taxpayer. The other thought I hope the Senator would agree with is, this is not just to Westinghouse, which is owned by the British Government, not a British corporation. This is also to Mitsubishi Steel because we are now going to take American taxpayer dollars, the difference between what we are paying on their notes that they are investing, their cash investment here, and we are going to subsidize a Japanese company. I hope the Senator would agree we shouldn't be doing that.”