Political Quotes

“I will be very brief. Again, this amendment is very simple and it does two things I would think the Senator from Washington especially would support, after all we have gone through, and especially after her alluding to some of the most recent developments in the financial system. I hope this amendment will receive broad support in this body. The Ex-Im Bank is set up to finance transactions that cannot be financed in the private sector. That is the purpose for its existence. So, No. 1, what this amendment will do is to cause the Ex-Im Bank to certify there is no private sector financing--or at least no private sector financing at a reasonable cost--before any loan goes through the Ex-Im Bank. The second piece I think is very important. The way the Ex-Im Bank is set up right now, there are no capital requirements. The Senator from Washington was just talking about something that happened at JPMorgan. Fortunately, we have put in place since the financial crisis very strong capital requirements at our financial institutions, and what that has done is to make them healthy and to cause them to be able to withstand things that may happen as relates to default rates or other failures. The Ex-Im Bank, believe it or not, is set up to finance things that no other bank will finance, and yet it has no capital requirements other than having to maintain $1 billion.…”