Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank and the legislation that we are soon going to be seeing on a continuing resolution that was just voted on by the House of Representatives. While I am happy that there is a CR--a continuing resolution--that keeps our government open, I am very distressed with the fact that the House is sending us a simple 9-month extension of the Export-Import Bank to expire June 30 of next year. The reason why that is so frustrating to me and many of my colleagues over here is because this is a jobs issue. It is about our economy, and we have heard today at various venues throughout the Capitol how people are actually losing jobs right now because of the uncertainty of the Export-Import Bank. So I know that some of my colleagues in the House of Representatives--Republicans--are proud they have helped to reauthorize the bank for 9 months. Make no mistake about it; this will cost us jobs in the United States of America during that time period. We had a press conference today. I was proud to be joined by my colleagues Senator Kirk, Senator Graham, Senator Manchin, and various leaders in the energy industry--the Nuclear Energy Institute; Combustion Associates, Inc.; Itron, which is a company in the Northwest; Westinghouse; and FirmGreen--to talk about how many energy jobs are dependent upon the Export-Import Bank. You can see from this chart: 46,000 U.S. energy jobs and $7.7 billion in energy exports.…”