Political Quotes

“A couple different things. I am a little surprised, Mr. Chairman, to hear some of the advocates here today because some of them, including the most recent speaker, were actually against the Bank when there was a different party in charge of the White House. I hear today that this is supposedly about jobs, jobs being created. By the way, that is a claim that not even the Export-Import Bank makes on its own. It has never come into our committee and said, ``We create jobs.'' It comes into our committee and says, ``We support jobs.'' We are not really sure what that means. We have asked them. They are not really sure how to count it. In fact, there is really good evidence that they are counting it wrong. Let's say for the sake of argument, Mr. Chairman, that they do create jobs. They also destroy jobs. Every time the government gets involved in the market and creates jobs someplace, they destroy it someplace else. It is just much harder to see. So it is very difficult for us to say: Look, this job was destroyed by the Export-Import Bank. But I will tell you this, my local banks in rural South Carolina can't go to the Treasury and borrow money for free every time they want to. If they could, they might be able to create some more jobs as well. We have a distortion to the market, Mr. Chairman, plain and simple. That is all this is. Are there going to be winners? Absolutely. There is a lot of them, as a matter of fact.…”