Corrupt Corporate Dems And Corrupt Corporate Republicans Team Up To Save The Export-Import Bank

Every now and then, the teabaggers team up with progressives and the two populist wings of their respective parties work together to challenge the grotesquely corrupt Establishment wings of the two Beltway parties. We've been hoping that might happen in the case of the scam known as the Export-Import Bank.

Grayson had been working to rally progressives and had been making some headway but in the end, Democrats hoping to not get beaten up by the Chamber of Commerce, sold out-- except for Grayson and Lloyd Doggett (R-TX). A former economist, Grayson tried helping clarify a complicated subject for some of his slower colleagues: "The Export-Import Bank is corporate welfare at its worst… We are extending the full faith and credit of the U.S. government to foreign companies, when we should be extending it to the American middle class instead. When these foreign borrowers go broke one day, as they surely will, our taxpayers will end up on the hook for their debt. And all for the sake of U.S. exports that would have happened anyway."

Corporate shills on both sides of the aisle-- Democrats like Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel, Jim Himes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, all the sleazy, corrupt New Dems and Blue Dogs plus the Chamber of Commerce Republicans are hoping progressives and libertarians can't cobble together a coalition with teabbaggers to derail this. Over the summer, The Hill covered the transpartisan corporate push led in the Senate by Big Coal puppet Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Chamber of Commerce whore Mark Kirk (R-IL). Their 5-year reauthorization increases the bank's credit exposure limit from the current $140 billion to $160 billion and-- thanks to Manchin-- reverses restrictions that Ex-Im officials passed in December preventing the bank from financing overseas power plants that won't adopt greener technology.

Progressives are opposed because the proposal exacerbates Global Warming and because it is pure crony capitalism, granting all kinds of rotten loans on projects American taxpayers are not in favor of funding, particularly ones that ship U.S. jobs overseas. Big very profitable companies-- with executives who pay out massive bribes to politicians in the form of campaign contributions-- like Boeing and big energy companies, get the bulk of the benefits. It really is primarily a Big Business subsidy fund with corrupt politicians getting a cut in the form of kickbacks. The bank invests in coal mining projects all over the world, including environmentally sensitive sites like the Great Barrier Reef and they routinely invest in companies with terrible employment and civil rights practices, including in government-sponsored companies where the governments benefitting are terrible human rights violators. I asked Alan Grayson why he was opposed to the Manchin/Kirk proposal and he said "The Export-Import Bank subsidizes foreigners who buy American products. Why don’t we take exactly the same money, and use it to subsidize Americans who buy American products?" Ironically, this morning the Club For Growth demanded Republicans vote no on the C.R.-- to keep funding the government-- because the Export-Import Bank is in the resolution.

This morning, Paul Kane and Robert Costa were reporting in the Washington Post that Team Boehner was steamrolling over the teabaggers and dashing any hopes for ending this particular corporate welfare program. Establishment Republicans beat up on populist Republicans by disingenuously threatening them with the optics of a government shutdown before the midterms-- and the teabaggers are surrendering.

Chief among those had been the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, the agency that helps U.S.-based corporations sell goods overseas. Many conservatives, led by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), accuse the bank of being a form of corporate welfare that skews the marketplace.

Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters that he had been discussing the issue with Hensarling, who had agreed that extending the agency into next year would be a smarter move than engaging in a shutdown fight just ahead of the November elections over a relatively obscure agency that promotes jobs.

“He thinks that a temporary extension of the Export-Import Bank is in order,” Boehner told reporters, a rare instance of the speaker announcing the intentions of one of his committee chairmen.

Hensarling repeatedly denied requests for comment Tuesday. Senior GOP aides in the House and Senate suggested that building in time for the fight next spring and summer would be a smarter play, especially if the Senate flips to Republican control in the midterm elections.

…Moderate Republicans, such as Rep. Jim Gerlach (Pa.), who represents the Philadelphia suburbs, said business interests in their districts have asked them to usher through an extension.

“It’s helpful to companies in southeastern Pennsylvania,” Gerlach said Tuesday evening in an interview near the House floor. “I would like to see it extended for as long as possible.”