Ex-Im Bank

choi

Jackie Calmes, Though Charter Is Expiring, Export-Import Bank Will Keep Its Doors Open. New York Times, July 1, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/0 ... its-doors-open.html

Quote:

(a) "Tea Party-inspired Republicans ended the bank’s long history of easy, bipartisan votes for reauthorization, contending that the agency is a corrupt exemplar of big government 'corporate welfare' and 'crony capitalism.'

(b) Mr [senate majority leader Mitch] McConnell in May promised bank supporters that they would get a chance to add reauthorization language to a must-pass bill, presumably the highway measure. And Mr [House speaker John A] Boehner has said that the House would have to take up whatever such bill the Senate passes.

"Bank proponents in both chambers say that they have enough votes to succeed; a test vote recently in the Senate registered 65 supporters for the bank, including 22 Republicans.

"To date, the hurdle for the agency has been in the House and Senate banking committees. The Republican chairmen, in particular Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, oppose the bank and have prevented their panels from producing legislation even to overhaul it to address what they say are its flaws.

"Mr Hensarling has done so despite an admonition from Mr Boehner to pass something, anything, even if it is a bill to wind down the bank. As Mr Hensarling has acknowledged, doing nothing actually achieves his goal of closing the bank, if temporarily; the danger of sending a committee bill to the House floor is that it could possibly be amended to preserve the bank.

My comment:
(a)
(i) Export-Import Bank of the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex ... f_the_United_States
(1934- ; is chartered as a government corporation by the Congress of the United States;
(ii)  Malcolm Stephens, The Changing Role of Export Credit Agencies. IMF, May 21, 1999
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/nft/1999/change/index.htm,
("The first export credit agency, the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) of the United Kingdom, was established in 1919. Its original purpose was to encourage and support exports (initially to Russia) that would not otherwise have taken place. Similar motivations led to the establishment of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (the U.S. Eximbank) in 1933. There was little further activity on the export credit front in the 1920s and 1930s, but many such agencies were founded after World War II")
(b) Tea Party (as well as I) subscribes to a school of economics that subsidy distorts, and thus argues against subsidy.
(c) This NYT report describes maneuvering in Congress, where there is a bipartisan support for the Ex-Im Bank in BOTH chambers. But Tea Party politicians deploy tactics to prevent a vote--in a committee, not to mention on the floor.
(d) There is no need to read the rest.