It's a New Fiscal Year! And the Same Old ExIm Impasse
A new month; a new federal fiscal year; a last-second approval of a federal budget; but still no movement on getting the Export-Import Bank back into business.
As for why you should care about this seemingly beyond-boring topic, please see the previous messages collected on this page. On what it all means, a few more installments from readers — plus this headline just now from the Dallas Morning News, about complaints from businesses in Texas to one of the GOP hardliners opposing the bank.
Now let’s hear from the readers.
It’s all about infrastructure. A reader who had heretofore been spared thoughts about ExIm now says it connects to bigger governance questions:
I join the ranks of your readers who know next to nothing about the Ex-im Bank. I didn't even know there was a controversy before your first post, and had no clue what it does or why.
But from what I've gleaned from these posts, the Ex-im bank sounds like it plays the same role as infrastructure, and the argument against it seems to be consistent with arguments against rebuilding our highways, railroads, power grids and telecommunications systems.
Any rational being alive before Reagan and the Roberts Court would have understood that the government had a role in creating a viable structure within which commerce could function. (cf. Constitution Article 1 §8 "The Congress shall have the power to...provide for the...general welfare of the United states... to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States...")
And so the expansion of the railroads in the mid 1800's was made possible by bonds and land acquisition financed by the federal government. And the interstate highway system was built. And easements for power and telecommunications were underwritten and facilitated by federal authority. And air traffic controllers used to be entirely public employees.
The description of the Ex-im Bank in your posts seems to fall squarely into that category. Quoting the letter from the various governors: "The Ex-im Bank assumes the credit and country risks that private lenders are unable or unwilling to accept...." Opposing it would be akin to saying that unless private entities build our highways, build our rail systems, deliver our mail, fight our wars, or control our air traffic, we should go without.
All of those things would "distort the market," certainly, if there were, in fact a functioning, nationwide market in which private interests could compete without harm to the nation as a whole. And to argue against it on ideological grounds is to argue in favor of a nation more akin to the US under the Articles of Confederation.
If the Constitution had been interpreted from the beginning as the Right so zealously wants to interpret it now, this nation would never have gotten off the ground. There really was a serious, palpable reason that the Constitution was written, and it was that this nation needed a much more powerful, commercially involved, national government in order to participate in the world of nations.
James Madison, arguing for the Constitution before the Virginia ratification convention, speaking about a strong national assumption of public debt said, "A respectable government will not only entitle us to a participation of the advantages which are enjoyed by other nations, but will be a security against attacks and insults. The best way to avoid danger is to be in a capacity to withstand it."
I don't disagree with your initial label of "idiocy." I'd go further and label it "ignorance."
How craven are our corporate chieftains? From a reader at a famous university:
I wonder whether an important aspect of what the Exim struggle tells us about the Tea Party and the GOP is being overlooked.
If the beneficiaries of government-guaranteed financing include as many large and influential corporations as you suggest, what is remarkable is that they have not made more of an effort to thwart an action that appears to be so contrary to their interests. The Bechtels and Boeings of the world have armies of lobbyists and lawyers in Washington. They have hardly been shy about using these tools in engagements with other adversaries, such as organized labor.
Perhaps they have been less vigorous in doing so to save EXIM because, at bottom, they recognize and appreciate the Tea Party as a dynamic and useful ally in battles for lower taxes, less regulation, and other aims that matter more to them. Better to let the Tea Party have this victory than risk a showdown and possible rupture.
In the same way, leaders of the big industrial firms in 1930s Germany put up with interference from the Nazis, whom they despised, because they welcomed Hitler’s ruthless effectiveness in crushing the left. Despite increasingly frequent divisions – e.g. over anti-gay measures in the states – the alliance between big business and the militantly conservative base remains a defining feature of the modern GOP.
We’re all Tea Partiers now! From a reader on the East Coast:
Neither party is taking us anywhere; not even reauthorizing something as minor as the Ex-Im Bank, as you suggest, or "carried interest," as Megan Mcardle suggests.
Worse, Reps can't cut entitlements and Dems can't raise tax because the vast majority of Americans don't want to pay more and get less. For example, opposition to the “Cadillac tax.”
Simply put, we're all Tea Partiers now! What suggests otherwise?
