Joe Nocera opines that the Ex-Im Bank that helps to secure deals for both small businesses wanting to expand and giant American exporters, that would otherwise go to foreign companies. The Ex-Im Bank in its last fiscal year generated enough in fees and interest to turn over $675 million to the Treasury. Why would anyone in their right mind want to put such a useful agency out of business? The far-right wing of the Republican Party.
A vast majority of senators, Republicans included, very much want to see the Ex-Im Bank live to lend another day. So do most business people, no matter what their politics. This week, when a reauthorization amendment was attached to the big Senate highway bill, it received only 64 votes. Jim McNerney, the chairman of Boeing, noting that the Ex-Im Bank helps keep manufacturing jobs in America, and he never thought he would see the day that U.S. companies would, in effect, be penalized by their own government for not setting up shop overseas and, in the case of Boeing, expanding our domestic production and work force by billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.
If the ideologues succeed in finishing off the Ex-Im Bank, it will be only the beginning of such efforts. What will they do with the Small Business Administration? What about the other tools we provide to small business?
With the Ex-Im Bank, the extreme right has drawn a line in the sand. Given the very real benefits it provides exporters, Nocera says that the time has come for the rest of us to do the same.
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