releases: https://www.heitkamp.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=35d447fe-8645-46b4-9eee-273890655d48
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://www.heitkamp.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=35d447fe-8645-46b4-9eee-273890655d48 | Heitkamp Statement on the Senate & House Passing her Bipartisan Bill to Reauthorize Export-Import Bank, Support North Dakota Businesses & Workers | 2015-12-04 | 2015 | 2015-12 | Democrat | House | ND | Heidi Heitkamp | H001069 | www.heitkamp.senate.gov | legacy | WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp issued the following statement after the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives passed her bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank as part of a long-term transportation bill. For the past 81 years, the Export-Import Bank has helped level the playing field for American entrepreneurs and manufacturers across the country, enabling them to export top-notch American products all over the world and grow jobs here at home, said Heitkamp. But for reckless, political reasons, some in Congress let this critical agency expire even though is supports American workers and has overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. For the past several months, Ive been fighting to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank and stand up to petty politics that have held hundreds of businesses nationwide hostage. This vote was an important step to show that Congress can work together across the aisle to stand up for American businesses and workers including in Fargo, Garrison, and throughout North Dakota and give them the certainty they need to create, invent and thrive. The Export-Import Bank has become crucial to businesses like Wahpetons near 60-year-old family-owned rubber supply company WCCO Belting, Inc., which CEO Thomas Shorma credits with helping take his company from repairing shoes to repairing tarps for farm trucks, then to new seats for tractors, canvas belting, and wooden slats to providing rubber products used in farm equipment like belts for harvesting grain or producing round bailers, or tube conveyers to move seed and grain that is supplied to major farm equipment companies around the world today. For years, the Export-Import Bank has been critical to helping North Dakota businesses compete internationally and keep jobs here at home thats why its fantastic news that Congress passed Senator Heitkamps bipartisan bill to reauthorize the agency today, said Thomas D. Shorma, CEO/President of WCCO Belting, Inc. in Wahpeton. Without the Export-Import Bank, the business my father started 60 years ago would not have grown into the international farm equipment manufacturing success that it is today and without Senator Heitkamps steadfast work to reauthorize the Bank today, 60 percent of our employees here at home could have been out of work. Its my hope that Congress will continue to promote certainty for small businesses like mine so we can keep growing local economies across the country. Heitkamp has been at the helm of bipartisan efforts to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank since she and Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois introduced their bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank in March. In North Dakota alone, the agency has boosted small businesses like Amity Technology in Fargo and WCCO Belting in Wahpeton and since 2007 has helped support $108 million in exports, as well as 633 jobs across the state. This past summer, 64 Republican and Democratic Senators voted to include the Kirk-Heitkamp bill to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank as an amendment to the long-term transportation legislation which passed in the Senate at the end of July. Unfortunately the House of Representatives did not bring the Senate highway bill up for a vote but Heitkamp continued to push for a path forward for her bill. As a result, the House showed its overwhelming bipartisan support for her legislation by using a rare parliamentary move to force a vote and passed her bill shortly afterward, reinforcing the clear bipartisan consensus in both chambers of Congress to pass Heitkamps legislation to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. Her bill was then included in the long-term transportation bill Congress negotiated which passed in both chambers. | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |