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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Republicans’ Ex-Im Bank victory may be shortlived

The Columbian
Published:

For decades, conservatives have dreamed of paring the federal government by eliminating entire cabinet departments — or at least an agency or two. Now they have finally done it.

Congress left Washington last week without renewing the federal charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, as it has previously done for 70 years. So at midnight Tuesday, the bank lost its authority to extend new taxpayer-backed loans to foreign purchasers of U.S. goods sold abroad, buoying conservatives who have mounted a years-long campaign to eliminate an institution they say represents the worst of big government.

“This is a small step toward renewing a competitive free-market economy and arresting the rise of the progressive welfare state and the cronyism connected to it,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and an outspoken Ex-Im opponent, said in a statement last week.

But the victory may not last. Congressional Democrats and many Republicans remain determined to reverse that step this month, and have launched a new messaging blitz focused on potential job losses and international competitiveness. Bank supporters are hoping to engage in parliamentary maneuvers calibrated to overcome the opposition of key GOP leaders even as a solid majority of lawmakers appear to believe the bank should continue its work.

In the Senate, there appears to be a filibuster-proof majority supporting the bank’s extension. Prospects in the House are less clear — though there, too, enough Republicans are thought to be willing to join with Democrats to renew the bank’s charter. When the bank was last reauthorized, in 2012, a solid majority of House Republicans supported it, joining a unanimous bloc of Democrats in a vote of 330 to 93.

But that was before a fierce lobbying campaign by some of the most formidable forces in conservative activism, including Heritage Action for America, the Club for Growth, and the industrialist billionaires Charles and David Koch. That has helped stiffen opposition to the bank’s renewal among business-friendly mainstream conservatives.

The effects of a lapse are in dispute. Although the bank will be forbidden from extending new loans, it will continue to service the more than $110 billion it has lent, and the bank would not say whether it plans layoffs or any immediate operational changes. Bank champions cite 2014 statistics showing Ex-Im loans supporting $27.5 billion worth of exports and 164,000 U.S. jobs, but detractors say private lenders will step up to fill the void.

In any case, conservative lawmakers and activists said they are eager to claim a tangible victory after years of less clear-cut outcomes.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” said Rep. Bill Flores , R-Tex., chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “If you’re going to start cutting the weeds out of the federal government, this is one of the first weeds you need to root out.”

The lapse in the bank’s charter also represents a win against what many conservatives view as an old, bloated Washington influence machine — in this case, represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, which have spent tens of millions of dollars in part on pro-bank advocacy.

The effort to restore the bank’s authority is almost certain to begin in the Senate. Democrats there say they extracted a commitment from Republican leaders to allow an amendment vote on the bank. Should the Senate vote to attach an extension of the bank’s authority to the highway bill, it would go to the House, where Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has pledged an “open amendment process” that would probably include a floor vote to strip it.

The House’s most conservative members are speaking out against such a move.

“If we can’t get rid of this one, then Republicans have jettisoned their ability to speak out on any fiscal matters,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said. “It is a small issue in terms of the dollars, but it is a big issue in that if we can’t take this out, you wonder if we can take anything out as a Republican majority.”

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