[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14600]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXPORT-IMPORT BANK

  (Mr. TONKO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, this week, one of the largest employers in my 
district, General Electric, announced it would be cutting hundreds of 
jobs nationwide due to Congress'--due to the leadership in this House--
inability to renew the Export-Import Bank.
  This politics over people and Republican dysfunction has plagued this 
body since the GOP won the majority. It has led to a government 
shutdown, obsession with blocking the President at every turn, and now 
a loss of hundreds of jobs in my district, Schenectady, New York.
  The blame game is played all too often in Washington and at the desks 
of cable news pundits.
  This, however, is a fact: hundreds of jobs in my district are gone 
because Republican House leadership decided it was more important to 
appease the extreme conservative flank of their own party than to renew 
an agency that creates jobs while cutting the deficit.
  As the Albany Times-Union accurately phrased it: ``This is the price 
tag of a Congress ruled by drown-government-in-the-bathtub ideologues 
who have no regard for facts: 500 American jobs bound for France, 
Hungary, and China.''
  I invite anyone in this body to visit Schenectady, New York. There, 
they will find families that work hard and play by the rules and don't 
expect a handout. In this case, a dysfunctional Congress shut down a 
program that lost families in my district their jobs. That is morally 
reprehensible and completely unacceptable.
  Let's do our job and not have other people lose their job because of 
inaction in this House.

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