Right-Wing Groups Cheer Shutdown of Ex-Im Bank's Charter Under Speaker Boehner's Watch
International Business Times– Who Killed The Ex-Im Bank? How Conservatives And The Koch Network Brought Down An Agency
Kristin Hedger has a simple plea Congress: Save the Export-Import Bank. Her family-owned company of about 350 employees in Killdeer, North Dakota depends on the bank, but this week the independent agency is out of business. The Ex-Im Bank's charter expired after a relentless Republican-led campaign smeared it as the embodiment of corporate welfare and government waste.
Hedger's company, Killdeer Mountain Manufacturing (KMM), depends on the Ex-Im Bank. It makes parts for airplanes and is headquartered in a town with a population of 751 people. Boeing, the company's biggest customer, purchases electronic components from KMM and puts them in the cockpits and wings of some of its best-selling planes.
"These are small heartland towns, and generally we're the biggest employer in our towns," says Hedger, who runs four manufacturing facilities in the state. "It's important that while we recognize we're heartland communities, we're competing against the whole international competition scale."
Ex-Im Bank is exactly the kind of pro-business, made-in-America program that should inspire praise from Republicans and Democrats alike…Congress –led by an organized and deliberate effort from conservatives and outside groups including the Koch brothers-funded Americans For Prosperity– didn't pass legislation before the deadline to reauthorize the bank.
The story of how the Export-Import Bank became the most hated agency in Washington extends far beyond the Beltway…It was created in 1934 by Franklin Roosevelt and has for the most part remained non-controversial ever since, largely because it doesn't cost the American taxpayer anything. In fact, in the last decade the bank contributed $6.4 billion in surpluses to reduce the national deficit.
But in recent years, pushed first by the conservative Club For Growth and then more successfully by Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the program's opponents have painted the bank as improper and corrupt and the loans…
In April 2014, AFP launched an aggressive lobbying effort targeted at members of Congress…
AFP started building a coalition…But members of Congress also worked behind the scenes. The two leaders were Hensarling and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan. And they sought to engage one-on-one with fellow House Republicans to win votes.
Past efforts by conservatives have mostly failed. The problem with previous attempts was that they often lacked a strategic endgame, like when they shut down the federal government for 17 days in a fight over the Affordable Care Act but could never explain the next step that was going to force the president to repeal his signature health care law.
In May of this year, Hensarling and Jordan were so confident the June 30 deadline was going to pass that they called a press conference to declare victory. They were joined by groups like AFP, Club for Growth and Heritage.
Los Angeles Times– Export-Import Bank's expiration a victory for billionaire Koch brothers
The Export-Import Bank, created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help foreign customers buy U.S. goods, has been reauthorized 16 times, usually with little fuss and often with strong Republican support.
But Congress let the bank's charter expire this week, halting any new loans.
Even more surprising than the rare event of a government program being wound down was the force behind the shutdown: the billionaire Koch brothers. Their network of groups turned what was once routine reauthorization of a lesser-known financing entity into a litmus test for conservatives — and they scored a major victory.
The ability to make the bank a Capitol Hill priority and even a presidential campaign issue highlights the growing power of the Koch network within the GOP.
Without the involvement of the Koch network of conservative groups they fund, "we wouldn't be where we are," she said.
Supporters, who include many business groups typically aligned with the GOP, say the bank is vital to fill the gap when private lending lags and to counter aid that rival countries provide for their exporters. They point to many smaller American firms and export suppliers that rely on the bank.
For the Kochs and the groups they fund, the campaign against the bank provided a way to prove that their small-government campaign extended beyond reducing programs for poor people, such as food stamps and Medicaid.
…The campaign against the bank also provided a way of proving their clout within the party by defeating a priority of long-established GOP powers in the business community.
Brent Gardner, vice president of government relations at Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group heavily financed by Charles and David Koch and their allies, said that for the billionaire brothers, the bank is "the perfect symbol for what they've talked about — a more free society."
The campaign to close the bank started after the Republicans won control of the House in 2010 as conservative groups, including Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth, began organizing opposition to the bank on and off Capitol Hill.
This Republican Congress continues to ignore the will of the people, continues to snub the hundreds of thousands of families and businesses reliant on the Export-Import Bank that operates at no cost to the taxpayer. Instead, Speaker Boehner and Leader McCarthy chose to listen to the wealthy few seeking to paralyze our country's economy and cause more dysfunction, obstruction and distraction – perpetuating their culture of shutdowns and manufactured crises.