Export Import Bank

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The Export-Import Bank is a federal agency that uses billions of tax dollars to back foreign business deals for a small handful of large companies. It is a classic Washington example of picking winners and losers. Some U.S. companies are supported by taxpayers, but most are not.

Congressional authorization for Ex-Im lapsed in 2015, and the agency was only reauthorized after some legislative gamesmanship that slipped it into an unrelated transportation funding bill. However, Ex-Im has been unable to approve new deals in excess of $10 million because its board lacks a quorum.

Now, the Obama Administration wants to change the rules to make a quorum unnecessary. To accomplish this last-minute end-around, the president would need the complicity of Congressional Republicans who would slip the rule change in their next massive federal spending bill.

It would be good for Republicans to remember that the American people elected a new president who said Ex-Im, is ‘really not free enterprise,’ calling it, ‘…a one-way street… feather bedding for politicians… and a few companies… that can do very well without it.’

The Export-Import Bank is exactly the kind of bureaucratic swamp that the American people want drained. They don’t want their tax dollars going to a corrupt federal agency that doles out Washington cronyism to a favored few who get an advantage over the vast majority of American businesses that export.

Congressional Republicans need to stand with taxpayers and firmly oppose Obama’s effort. The Export-Import Bank needs to go away, and not be given an expanded opportunity to continue its corruption.