Lawmakers Call on Export-Import Bank Supporters to Lobby Capitol Hill
Melissa Quinn /
With less than 70 days to go before the Export-Import Bank’s charter expires, the countdown on determining the 80-year-old’s agency is underway.
To push Congress to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, three lawmakers urged hundreds of the agency’s supporters in Washington, D.C., for Ex-Im’s annual conference to lobby in favor of its existence.
Those lawmakers were Reps. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D. Former Virginia Gov. George Allen also joined the lawmakers to speak about the bank’s benefits.
“We hope that you’re participating on the Hill and that you are reaching out to your senators, reaching out to your members of Congress, that you are reaching out to your states and your governors,” Heitkamp said.
The North Dakota senator attributed the debate over Ex-Im’s future to “philosophical differences.”
“We hope that you’re participating on the Hill and that you are reaching out to your senators, reaching out to your members of Congress, that you are reaching out to your states and your governors,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.
Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action for America, refuted Heitkamp’s call to conference attendees.
“It is revealing,” he told The Daily Signal. “A Democrat senator is begging businesses to lobby Republican lawmakers for subsidies. It will be hard for the GOP to credibly confront Hillary Clinton if it can’t say no on this issue.”
Allen currently works with the National Association of Manufacturers as co-chair of the group’s Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative. The National Association of Manufacturers is one of the biggest supporters of Ex-Im and is working on a campaign calling for its reauthorization.
“Eliminating the Export-Import Bank would exacerbate slightly the deficit problem in our country as well as weaken the manufacturing sectors part of our economy,” Allen said today.
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“The Export-Import Bank clearly helps U.S. companies compete. It’s crucial to our competitiveness.”
The bank’s opponents believe the agency serves as an engine of corporate welfare and cronyism that primarily benefits a handful of politically connected, large corporations like Boeing, Caterpillar and General Electric.
Ex-Im provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies for the purchase of U.S. exports. Past reauthorizations of the bank’s charter have been met with little fanfare, passing Congress easily, but lawmakers are currently embroiled in a debate over whether the agency should be reauthorized or ended.
The looming June 30 deadline to reauthorize the bank was hardly mentioned during the first day of Ex-Im’s annual gathering. However, Ex-Im Chairman Fred Hochberg opened the conference’s second day by reminding attendees that the agency’s future rests in lawmakers’ hands.
“I have a lot of optimism,” Hochberg said. “We have a majority of members of Congress—Democrats, Republicans together—calling for reauthorization in different forms.”
Many of the bank’s supporters argue that because 60 other countries have their own export credit agencies, ending Ex-Im would give the U.S. and domestic companies a competitive disadvantage.
“It would be absolutely irrational for us to think the rest of the world is not watching this [debate],” Heitkamp said.