The vote sends the legislation to the Senate. | AP Photo
On October 27, 2015, Victoria Guida writes on Politico:
Led by rebellious Republican moderates, the House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to revive the Export-Import Bank in a major setback for conservatives who wanted to kill an institution they say epitomizes corporate welfare.
The 313-118 vote sends the legislation to the Senate, where supporters are attempting to craft a plan to bring an Ex-Im bill to the president’s desk. A majority of House Republicans and a third of the House Financial Services Committee Republicans voted for the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he won’t take up a standalone bill, although he has allowed the agency’s renewal to be attached to other must-pass legislation. While a bill identical to the one that cleared the House on Tuesday also passed the Senate, it was attached to that chamber’s long-term highway bill. If the House passes its own long-term highway bill next week, as expected, supporters expect that will serve as the vehicle for a conference bill that could include Ex-Im’s renewal.
“The way to achieve Ex-Im – if it is going to be achieved in the Senate – would be in the context of the highway bill,” McConnell said Tuesday before the vote.
Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, who is leading the Senate’s reauthorization efforts, said he is pursuing such a plan.
“I think we’re going to go with the leader’s plan, which is to attach it to transpo,” Kirk told POLITICO on Tuesday before the Republican conference lunch.
For now, though, the House vote is a major step on the tortured path to reviving the export credit agency.
House backers of the expired export credit agency, led by Tennessee Republican Stephen Fincher, used a rare parliamentary maneuver to force a vote on the agency, over the opposition of conservative Republicans. The agency, which promotes exports by U.S. companies, expired this summer after conservatives denounced it as an expensive giveaway to special interests. Supporters say its loan guarantees support more than 160,000 U.S. jobs.
Supporters signaled Tuesday they were keeping their options open. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said ahead of the vote that Senate Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Patty Murray were seeking to convince McConnell to move a standalone bill.
Ohio Republican Rob Portman acknowledged that the highway bill is one vehicle but indicated there could also be others. “I think by the end of the week, [the House] will have a strong vote,” he said on Tuesday. “So that might change the calculus, I don’t know. But it needs to get done; we’re losing jobs, thousands of jobs.”
Even if the House and Senate highway bills go to conference before Thanksgiving, it is not a foregone conclusion that the Ex-Im renewal would be part of the final bill.
“You would’ve been hard-pressed to see how a new House leadership team and a whole bunch of committee chairmen would’ve rewarded [Ex-Im supporters] and allowed it to be added into a conference committee report,” said Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, the conservative advocacy group which opposes the renewal.
Meanwhile, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, who has done more than any other member to destroy the bank, is looking at the bright side. “The last time the House voted on a long-term reauthorization of Ex-Im, only 93 members voted against it. Today, 118 voted no. Momentum is moving in favor of those who oppose Ex-Im’s corporate welfare,” he said in a statement.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/export-import-bank-house-vote-215218
The truth is that the Export-Import Bank is an institution that epitomizes corporate welfare, because the loan guarantees it provides benefits American corporations which are not fully employed owned but instead narrowly owned by an already wealthy ownership class who benefit from American taxpayers.
The entire argument on the debate about the fate of the 80-year-old government agency known as the Export-Import Bank is centered around JOB CREATION rather than OWNERSHIP CREATION. As noted in the article, supporters argue that the bank’s loan guarantees support more than 160,000 U.S. jobs but fail to also acknowledge that the overwhelming wealth-creating, income-generating benefits will accrue to the already wealthy ownership class, who dominate the ownership structure of American corporations.
The result of the decades-long financial support for companies exporting American-made products is an example of crony-end game capitalism disguised to the taxpaying citizens as necessary to create jobs. NO WHERE are there stipulations that the the companies benefiting be financed so that the workers will end up owning a significant share of the new growth capital assets and the benefits of the wealth-creation and income generated from selling their products globally. While the mission of the Export-Import Bank is to create and sustain U.S. jobs by financing sales of U.S. goods and products to foreign buyers and help small and mid-size manufacturers throughout the country by providing loans, guarantees, insurance and other aid to those buyers, there is no stipulations that the companies benefiting from the taxpayer aid be fully employee-owned. Instead taxpayer aid is boosting the growth of technologically infused manufacturing with advanced “robotics.” digitalized operations, and super-automated capital assets, that will be OWNED by a select narrow group of already wealthy owners who get to cash in on taxpayer incentives and subsidies.
The Export-Import Bank charter needs to be reformed to provide stipulations that workers are empowered and aided using insured capital credit loans repayable with pre-tax future earnings to create over time significant individual worker ownership shares in these companies. A Justice-Based Managed Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) (http://www.cesj.org/?s=eSOP) is the financial mechanism that should be used for this objective so that new manufacturing growth becomes broadly owned over time and the workers benefit from a Second Income from dividend earnings to supplement their wages.
Where is the rallying cry for OWNERSHIP NOW!?
