Tag: Export-Import Bank

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Common Sense folly free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Cruz “Loses”

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When Sen. Ted Cruz gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, last week, he ruffled a few feathers. Calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar in front of everybody is just not done. “Elder party statesmen have not been amused,” the Los Angeles Times reports:

On Sunday, 81-year-old Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the GOP’s most senior senator, opened the chamber’s session with a reminder to colleagues of the ground rules.

“Squabbling and acrimony may be tolerated on the campaign trail,” said Hatch, who urged senators colleagues toward comity and decorum, and to keep their egos in check.

Cruz defended himself. “It is entirely consistent with decorum . . . to speak the truth.”

The “squabble” was over the Export-Import Bank, mainly. Cruz blurted out how McConnell had betrayed his own party members in the Senate by cutting a backroom deal for the crony-capitalist moral hazard that is the Ex-Im.

Regardless (or because of?) Cruz’s truth-telling, the Senate rebuffed Cruz and “voted to advance the Export-Import bank and deny the presidential hopeful a vote on his amendment.”

Crony capitalism continues.

But note an odd aside in the LA Times’s account. The paper went out of its way to identify Ex-Im as “opposed by the powerful Koch brothers but supported by a bipartisan coalition of business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

The Kochs were brought up . . . for what reason?

So vilified by the left, these days, the Kochs are a red herring . . . which the Times threw into the issue like an Erisian apple, nudging Democratic readers not to sympathize with Cruz.

We can’t have his anti-crony-capitalist stance attract Democratic readers, now, can we?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Import-Export Boogymen

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Common Sense general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Forget Frankenstein

Import Export

Some proposals are so shocking and not common that, no matter how rational or sensible, we cannot legitimately call them “common sense.”

Could this be one?

You tell me.

Congress is right now struggling to pass a highway funding bill. Authorized funding by the federal government on roads ends with the passing of this month, July. So, blogs Scott Shackford at Reason, “the legislature has to pass something. Because the legislature has to pass something, people are trying to squeeze everything into it.”

And our illustrious president wants to revive the recently dead, the Export-Import Bank. “When he was a senator, Barack Obama knew the program was nothing but corporate welfare,” writes Shackford. “But now as president, he has flip-flopped and is trying to keep the institution alive.”

I don’t know if the prez will ultimately succeed, cajoling Congress to revive the monster by stuffing it into the roads bill, but at least “Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced an amendment to the highway bill that would kill the bank and unload its assets to the treasury.”

Go, Rubio! Getting rid of the Ex-Im Bank is just anti-crony common sense.

So what’s the “uncommon” sense? This out-of-the-mainstream notion: We don’t need a federal transportation bill at all. It’s not as if states cannot secure funding for roads. (They already do.) Devolve the whole Interstate system back onto the states!

Radical? Maybe. But the federal government just spends and spends without much sense. Distribute the responsibility for roads to the states; let Congress figure out how to manage its remaining tasks.

For a change.

I think this is . . . Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Import Export

 

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moral hazard subsidy

For Some Reason

Yesterday, the House voted to extend the legal ability for the Export-Import Bank to run . . . for another nine months. The people’s legislature passed the “stop-gap” measure, 319-108, with both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.

Just last month, President Obama expressed dismay that Republicans would be against it.

“For some reason,” he intoned, “right now the House Republicans have decided that we shouldn’t do this. . . .” He pretended to incredulity and puzzlement. He gave the usual reasoning for the subsidized financial guarantees, and insisted that “every country does this.”

“When,” he asked, “did that become something that Republicans opposed?”

Obama could’ve asked all those members of his own party who opposed it.

But then, he could have asked himself. Back in 2008, he very clearly put the Ex-Im Bank on the theoretical chopping block. Candidate Obama gave the big business bank up as a program that “didn’t work” and one that had become “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”

So why the change of mind, Mr. Obama?

Has the Ex-Im ceased being a fund for corporate welfare?

No. It’s still there, propping up big businesses doing business abroad — indeed, multinationals abroad, the kind of companies that Obama’s Occupier friends despise so deeply.

What has changed? He’s in power, now. And that power derives from the mighty federal purse, filled by taxing hundreds of millions of Americans, and used to give hundreds of millions and billions in benefits to the few, the insiders.

President Obama and the congressional leadership of both parties are tighter than ever with special interests.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets insider corruption too much government

Maxine’s Ex-Im Brokerage

“In Maxine Waters’ economy,” wrote Timothy Carney yesterday, “big business rows the boat while government steers.”

The Democratic Congresswoman, known for championing the poor and the less well-off, just loves throwing money around.

Including to the rich.

Carney shows that, for all her anti-big biz talk, she’s playing into the hands of big business.

On Tuesday, Waters held a rally in support of the Export-Import Bank. Among the welfare queens on stage with her was a lobbyist for Boeing.

And not without reason. “More than 80 percent of Ex-Im’s subsidy dollars support big businesses,” Carney explains. “Ex-Im’s biggest subsidy product is long-term loan guarantees, and last year two-thirds of those . . . supported Boeing exports.”

Senator Mike Lee has come out swinging against Ex-Im, taking what he sees as the “moral high ground against political corruption.”

Maxine Waters objects to such upstart Republican interference in what she insists is a “legitimate” function of government. So used to robbing some to lavish on others, she apparently thinks this racket defines the government’s purview.

And Waters enthusiastically serves as a broker in the ongoing exploitation of consumers for the benefit of a few (insider-blessed) businesses.

In the marketplace, businesses get rich serving customers. When seeking taxpayer handouts, on the other hand, they get rich serving politicians.

Maybe that’s why  freedom troubles politician Waters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.