Manufacturers appreciate the leadership of those U.S. Representatives that supported a long-term reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, but the battle isn’t over yet. Ex-Im returned $675 million to the U.S. Treasury for deficit reduction in 2014, Hochberg has said. Conservative Republicans in Congress and outside conservative political groups have mounted a vigorous campaign to permanently close the bank, arguing it provides taxpayer-funded “corporate welfare” for elite multinationals such as Boeing Co and General Electric McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who opposes renewal of the trade bank, said he had already allowed two Senate votes aimed at renewing EXIM and that the path forward for the trade lender’s backers was to try to attach it to a transportation funding bill.
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House members are scheduled to consider a Senate-passed highway measure that includes a provision reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank through September 2019. He has tasked Senate Rules Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, and others with reviewing a possible change in how many votes are needed to block appropriations bills. Manufacturers from all over the country have called, emailed and even visited their U.S. Representatives, up until the last minute before the vote, to share their stories and make sure these lawmakers heard about the critical role that Ex-Im Bank plays in helping manufacturers grow by exporting.
An odd-couple pairing of Fincher and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking House Democrat, out- maneuvered top House Republicans to force the vote to reauthorize the bank.
After more than eight decades of largely noncontroversial operation in which the bank extended loan guarantees to help finance sales of US-made aircraft and other exports, Ex-Im this year became a cause-célèbre of hardline conservative Republicans, particularly those with talk radio shows and online media platforms. Because one man, Senator McConnell, wants it that way.
The fight over the bank’s future also has divided Republican-friendly organizations. Earlier this month, House Republicans filed a discharge petition with 218 signatures, and the motion was assigned to the Discharge Calendar. The final bill will then be sent back to both chambers of Congress for a final vote, before reaching the president’s desk. Here is the reality: “In my district, thousands of jobs, millions of dollars of exports and many, many people rely on this being reauthorized”.
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This week’s vote in the House shows that this burn-down-Ex-Im position is a decidedly minority view.
