Free Republic

For the second time in a week, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has rejected the idea of passing a Senate long-term highway funding bill that would include a provision to revive the Export-Import Bank. "My best advice to the Senate is to get our highway bill moving forward," McCarthy told reporters. McCarthy said the House will adjourn in four days, on Thursday, and will not stick around to take up any highway spending measure sent from the Senate. His decision essentially ends any hope of reviving the authorization of the Export-Import Bank, which expired on June 30. Many Republicans and almost...

In a stunning floor speech Friday morning, Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying to Senate Republicans about whether there was a secret agreement to allow a vote on an amendment to extend the Export-Import Bank, which conservatives staunchly oppose. Cruz unleashed his anger at McConnell moments after the Senate voted to move ahead on a highway funding bill that will include amendments to extend the Ex-Im Bank and to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The deal doesn't provide Cruz with an equal opportunity to bring up his own amendments, including one that would...

Next week, Senate Republicans could pass Obamacare repeal with a simple 51-vote majority as part of the long-term highway bill, according to Sen. Mike Lee. The Utah Republican laid out the argument in a press release after party leaders set the sequencing of votes: "The first Obamacare vote on Sunday will have a 60 vote threshold, and Democrats will likely block it," Lee continued. "But thanks to the sequencing of the votes we just locked in, Republicans will have the opportunity resurrect that Obamacare amendment later on in the process, and put it back before the Senate in a manner...

WASHINGTON -- In a stunning attack on a leader of his own party, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying to him and said he couldn't be trusted. Cruz, a Texan who is running for president but ranks low in early polling, delivered the broadside in a speech on the Senate floor, an extraordinary departure from the norms of Senate behavior that demand courtesy and respect. At issue are assurances Cruz claimed McConnell, R-Ky., had given that there was no deal to allow a vote to renew the federal Export-Import Bank - a little-known federal...

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sure does want to shut down a lot of the federal agencies he hopes to one day run.The firebrand conservative and GOP presidential candidate has defined his young Senate career by almost reflexively opposing increased government spending and programs . . ."I think we should shrink the size and power of the federal government by every and any means possible," he told the Daily Caller in 2012. -- snip -- The State DepartmentMost recently, Cruz threatened in a letter to President Obama to hold up State Department nominees and hold all bills that fund...

Few in the odd coalition of Left and Right pushing for reauthorization of the 81-year-old Export-Import Bank have been louder than Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “It’s wrong that candidates for president, who really should know better, are jumping on this bandwagon,” she said at a May 22 campaign stop in New Hampshire. “It’s wrong, it’s embarrassing. . . . The idea that we would remove this relatively small but vital source of funding for our businesses to compete is absolutely backwards.” Clinton’s defense of Ex-Im may be motivated by more than mere concern for American businesses. Critics have argued...

Congressional Republicans are poised to deal a sharp blow to their traditional allies in the business community by allowing the federal Export-Import Bank to go out of business at the end of the month. But it may only be temporary. The 81-year-old bank is a little-known federal agency created during the Depression that makes and guarantees loans to help overseas buyers purchase US products, from airplanes to bridges to baby clothes. Over the past year it's also become a surprising test of GOP purity, as tea party-backed lawmakers and outside conservative groups have denounced the bank as crony capitalism and...

While conservatives have been nearly unanimous in calling for the end of the Washington slush fund known as the Export-Import Bank, Congress will clearly remain under a lot of pressure from powerful business interests. The authorization for the bank is due to expire at the end of this month, so no real action is required to make it go away beyond simply doing nothing. Given how that’s what Congress is usually best at, this sounds pretty easy, but one major employer has begun leveling threats as to what will happen if they don’t get to keep the scheme in place....

The Export-Import Bank charter will expire in a few days, on June 30, unless Congress acts to reauthorize it. The Export-Import Bank was created more than 80 years ago by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help foreign customers buy goods from the United States. Some companies benefit from the Export-Import Bank and they are the first ones to defend its reauthorization. But let’s be clear: Companies benefit from Export-Import Bank loans at the expense of taxpayers and other businesses. Taxpayers—not the companies themselves—assume the risk of a foreign loan, made through a private bank (like Goldman Sachs), to purchase a...

The Export-Import Bank is almost certain to close its doors for the first time in history this summer, dragged down by presidential politics and a bitterly divided GOP — raising the question of whether the nation’s chief export credit agency will ever be revived. Supporters are beginning to throw up their hands and admit that the agency is very likely to lose its charter after June 30, the first time since President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the agency in 1934 that it won’t be available to support U.S. exporters. Story Continued Below . . House leaders, who are divided on...

This month Congress will consider whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Ex-Im Bank is a New Deal-era federal program that uses taxpayer funds to subsidize the exports of American businesses. Foreign businesses, including state-owned corporations, also benefit from Ex-Im Bank. One country that has benefited from $1.5 billion of Ex-Im Bank loans is Russia. Venezuela, Pakistan, and China have also benefited from Ex-Im Bank loans. With Ex-Im Bank’s track record of supporting countries that supposedly represent a threat to the US, one might expect neoconservatives, hawkish liberals, and other supporters of foreign intervention to be...

Opposition to the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) is now at the point where the bank’s reauthorization is genuinely in doubt. Spurred by accusations of corporate welfare, crony capitalism and outright corruption, opponents believe the Ex-Im Bank’s palpable violation of free-market principles fully warrants its early demise. The Ex-Im Bank’s critics have their economics entirely correct, but they have their geopolitics wrong. Their solution — simply terminating the bank — is appealing but counterproductive. What America should do, under a president with the wit to do it, is negotiate the global elimination of “export credits” (as these subsidies are generically known)....

Sen. Maria Cantwell engaged in a very public maneuver on the Senate floor Thursday, withholding her vote in favor of the big trade bill until she got assurances that there would be a vote on renewing the Export-Import Bank. Afterward, explaining the fervency of her support for the Ex-Im Bank, she told such a howler that even the Capitol press corps, not empowered to actually call a senator a liar, made sure to offer readers the opportunity to reach that conclusion on their own. The Democrat from Washington state, where Boeing is the single largest employer, said her support for...

A controversial state-owned Moroccan mining firm that has poured money into Hillary Clinton’s foundation has received more than $92 million in U.S. taxpayer support, public records show. The firm, OCP, has been accused of violating U.S. and international law. According to a Friday report in Politico, it has also donated $6 million to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. In September, the U.S. Export-Import Bank guaranteed a $92 million Citibank loan to OCP to purchase equipment from two American manufacturers. That federal support came despite controversial practices by the state-owned company, detailed by Politico in a story on the...

WASHINGTON — Conservatives’ next disappointment will at least be a validation. The coming reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank will confirm their warnings about the difficulty of prying the government’s tentacles off what should be society’s private sphere. The bank, which exists to allocate credit by criteria other than the market’s preference for efficiency, mirrors the market-distorting policies of foreign governments. These policies favor those countries’ exports that compete with America’s. Much of what the bank does is supposedly to “level the playing field.” When Fred P. Hochberg, the bank’s chairman and president, defends it, an old joke comes to mind:...

There are a lot of solid reasons why federal programs like the Export-Import (EX-IM) Bank, should be terminated. I cover the majority of those reasons in the report I just filed on Communities Digital News. http://www.commdiginews.com/business-2/moral-hazard-at-the-export-import-bank-private-gain-vs-social-risk-26916/ Issues like questions of proper management, potential for fraud related to insider influence, unintended consequences of disruption of domestic markets, risk related to the volatility of the world economy, are all among them. Those are legitimate concerns and have demonstrated themselves to be problems. Above them all, and foremost is the essential consideration of legitimacy. The Ex-Im bank was spawned in illicit circumstances. Most...

House Republicans are preparing a continuing resolution to keep the government open. In doing so, they’ve decided to be total sluts for K Street and Wall Street. The Crony Capitalists, emboldened by the Chamber of Commerce’s help during primary season, are doing some very unusual things. Here’s what I hear is happening. First, they will reauthorize the Ex-Im bank, which is something K Street is desperate to see happen. Second, current reports are that they will spend more than the original Paul Ryan — Patti Murray deal that had included a tax hike. However, that is subject to change. Third,...

The American people should be sadly unsurprised to hear President Obama say one thing and see him do another. From the now-laughable “if you like your plan, you can keep it” claim to those infamous “red lines” in Syria, empty rhetoric is unfortunately all too common in this administration. But with his recent ringing endorsement of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the President has taken his flip-flopping to a new level. In his weekly address to the nation on August 23, President Obama praised the Ex-Im Bank, a federal credit agency that provides financing for deals between American...

#EndExIm Heritage Action for America is coordinating with its social media activists for a TwitterFest tonight beginning at 5:30PM EST until approximately 6PM EST on the need for Congress to put a final nail in the coffin of the wasteful, sometimes corrupt and ultimately unnecessary, Export-Import Bank. It's a form of rent seeking international pork for corporations that already have a viable business model without it. Eliminating it takes Congress out of the role of picking winners in the free market. Please post at least one Tweet with this link http://heritageaction.com/2014/04/export-import-bank-reauthorization/ and be sure to use the hashtag #EndExIm

Since it swept into Congress during the 2010 wave elections, the Tea Party has claimed small victories in blocking President Obama's legislative priorities and extracting spending cuts through debt-ceiling ceasefires. But if things go their way this fall, they would get their first true scalp: the Export-Import bank. Reinvigorated by the GOP primary loss of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Tea Party is on the verge of claiming perhaps its biggest policy victory in Washington. Its victim would be an institution that has existed for 80 years and far beyond the Obama era — since the New Deal era...