Export-Import Bank 'Is a Success Story'
- The Baltimore Sun Editorial – Revive Export-Import Bank
What independent agency has supported millions of jobs, enjoyed support from Republican and Democrat presidents alike over its 81-year history and doesn't cost taxpayers a dime, actually earning billions of dollars in revenue for the U.S. Treasury? The answer is the U.S. Export-Import Bank…
…the bank's defeat has been a cause celebre for the tea party wing as well as some of the conservative moment's biggest backers including Charles and David Koch and the Club for Growth.
But that criticism not only fails to recognize the agency's record of success — an estimated 164,000 jobs created in fiscal year 2014 alone by helping underwrite $27.4 billion in U.S. exports (the vast majority of the transactions helping small businesses) — but ignores the reality of government involvement in the global marketplace.
…The EXIM Bank is a success story, not a pariah.
- San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial – Fix the Export-Import Bank, don't kill it
For 81 years, the U.S. Export-Import Bank has received bipartisan support as a reasonable free-market tool to help U.S. companies, particularly small businesses, compete in an increasingly challenging and interconnected global marketplace.
The bank has been reauthorized 16 times by Congress – never without some degree of political wrangling. This time is no different. It has been in limbo for a month as its authorization lapsed...
…in this world, in this economy, helping U.S. business compete abroad should be a top priority.
Congress must resolve its impasse and reauthorize the bank...
The GOP leaders may talk about being the Party of ‘jobs' and ‘helping small businesses,' but their dysfunction, obstruction and distraction is causing widespread concern among small businesses:
Wall Street Journal – Small Businesses Bear Burden of Ex-Im Bank Shutdown
Political opponents have managed to shut the U.S. Export-Import Bank for the most of the summer…
But the bank and its supporters say the burden of the agency's shutdown for now will hit small businesses…
"Small businesses are the ones that are going to be hurt first and the most," said Rep. Denny Heck (D., Wash.), a proponent of reauthorizing the bank's charter.
President Barack Obama has called on Congress to reauthorize the agency, and most of the bank's supporters expect lawmakers to follow suit later this year. On Monday, 64 senators voted for an amendment to reopen the bank, and some Republicans estimated that at least 300 of the 434 current House lawmakers would vote similarly, given the chance.
"At some point we'll miss out on a business opportunity that will be of such magnitude that it will catch the attention of the public, and we'll respond," said Rep. Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), who supports the bank's reauthorization.
Big businesses say closing the bank for good will leave them at enough of a disadvantage against European and Asian competitors, which benefit from export-credit agencies at home, that they will move production abroad.
Around 90% of loans backed by Ex-Im Bank last year went to small businesses, the highest level in more than a decade. Small businesses represent a much smaller share of loans by dollar volume, around 25%, because Ex-Im backs expensive loans for aircraft and other industrial equipment makers.
Some businesses and their workers say that count overlooks firms that don't export directly but feed into supply chains. Yanke Machine Shop Inc. in Boise, Idaho, was one of 22 different U.S. companies that fulfilled an order for 150 pieces of construction equipment worth $37 million for a 2013 engineering project in Cameroon.
"What a lapse does is it kills opportunity. You've got to have opportunity before you have work on the floor," said Dirk Christison, who works in customer support for the heavy-steel fabrication company.
At risk could be deals like one that Ray Garcia Jr., the principal of an energy consulting firm that arranges investment for infrastructure projects in Latin America, has put together to export American equipment for a $300 million gas-to-liquid plant in Paraguay.
He said the project is one of three in South and Central America that is now in limbo. "We have spent two years developing these projects just to have the rug pulled out from under us for political reasons," said Mr. Garcia, a self-described conservative Republican from Houston.
Mr. Garcia said that without Ex-Im, the deal would go to a foreign company or large multinational, leaving his U.S. manufacturers without contracts. "Small businesses that do not have $1 billion in capital to facilitate projects like these do benefit and can compete on a global platform armed with Ex-Im Bank," he said.
It's been almost a month since Republicans dealt a body blow to American workers and American businesses trying to compete and succeed in the global Marketplace. Through the Democrats' Previous Question (PQ) today, Speaker Boehner and the House GOP leadership will have a fifth opportunity to vote to preserve this vital job-creating institution and end their latest manufactured crisis.