The Book of Ron Paul 1997 Ron Paul Chapter 89 EXPORT-IMPORT BANK 30 September 1997 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record (Page H8191)   Cached

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Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. PAUL], with whom I disagree on this bill, but I totally agree with his right to present his points of view. (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) 1997 Ron Paul 89:1 Mr. PAUL. I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, Mr. Chairman, and for the disclaimer. 1997 Ron Paul 89:2 Mr. Chairman, it is correct, I am going to vote no on this bill, for various reasons. I stated some of those earlier on. One is constitutional. There is a strong moral argument against a bill like this. But I am going to talk a little bit about the economics. Also, one other reason why I am going to vote against this bill has to do with campaign finance reform. If we vote no against this, I think we would be working in the direction of campaign finance reform. 1997 Ron Paul 89:3 I myself get essentially no business PAC money. I do not have any philosophic reasons not to take it. I would take the money on my conditions, but that sort of excludes me. But not infrequently when I would visit with large corporations they would ask me, what is my position on the Export-Import Bank. And when they would find out, of course they would not give me any money. 1997 Ron Paul 89:4 So I would say that the incentive to get people to do certain things for subsidies gives this incentive for big corporations to subsidize and to donate money to certain politicians. If we did not have so much economic power here, there would not be the incentive for big business to come and buy our influence. 1997 Ron Paul 89:5 Mr. Chairman, I do not happen to believe that campaign finance reform will ever be accomplished by merely taking away the right of an individual or company to spend money the way they see fit. Regulating finances of a company, once a company can come in here and put pressure on us to pass the Export-Import Bank, I think is an impossible task. 1997 Ron Paul 89:6 There have been certain economic arguments, so-called, in favor of this bill, but I think there are some shortcomings on the economics. One thing for sure, I think even the supporters of this bill admit that this is not free trade, this is an infraction that we have to go through because the other countries do this. 1997 Ron Paul 89:7 But we might compare this. It is true, we subsidize our companies less than Japan, but would Members like to have Japan’s economy right now? Japan has been in the doldrums for 8 years. They subsidize it 30, 40, 50 percent of the time. Maybe it is not a good idea. Yes, ours are small in number, but why should we expand it and be like Japan? So I would suggest that the benefits, the apparent benefits, are not nearly as great as one might think. 1997 Ron Paul 89:8 The other thing that is not very often mentioned is that when we allocate credit, whether we expand credit, which was mentioned earlier, that we do expand credit, we extend credit, we allocate it, we subsidize it, so we direct certain funds in a certain direction, but we never talk about at the expense of what and whom. 1997 Ron Paul 89:9 When a giant corporation or even a small business gets a government-guaranteed loan, it excludes somebody else. That is the person we never can hear from, so it is the unseen that is bothersome to me. Those who get the loans, sure, they will say yes, we benefited by it. Therefore, it was an advantage to us. But we should always consider those individuals who are being punished and penalized, that they do not have the clout nor the PAC to come up here and promote a certain piece of legislation. 1997 Ron Paul 89:10 Another good reason to vote against this piece of legislation, it is through this legislation that we do support countries like China and Russia. This is not supporting free markets. They are having a terrible time privatizing their markets. Yet, our taxpayers are being required to insure and subsidize loans to state-owned corporations. 1997 Ron Paul 89:11 China receives the largest amount of money under Eximbank. I do believe in free trade. I voted for low tariffs for China. I support that. But this is not free trade. This is subsidized trade. It is the vehicle that we subsidize so much of what we criticize around here. Some people voted against low tariffs for China because they said, we do not endorse some of the policies of China. They certainly should not vote for the subsidies to China nor the subsidies to the corporations that are still owned by the state in Russia, because it is at the expense of the American taxpayer. 1997 Ron Paul 89:12 It is said that the companies that benefit will increase their jobs, and that is not true. There are good statistics to show that the jobs are actually going down over the last 5 or 6 years. Jobs leave this country from those companies that benefit the most. 1997 Ron Paul 89:13 It is also said quite frequently here on the floor that this is a tremendous benefit to the small companies. Eighty-some percent, 81 percent of all the loans made go to small companies. There is some truth to that. That is true, but what they do not tell us is only 15 percent of the money. Eighty-five percent of the money goes to a few giant corporations, the ones who lobby the heaviest, the ones who come here because they want to support high union wages and corporate profits for sales to socialist nations and socialist-owned companies. 1997 Ron Paul 89:14 For these reasons, I urge a no vote on this bill. Note: 1997 Ron Paul Chapter 89 The C-Span video was not available for this chapter.

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