Sen. Richard Shelby sounds ready to let the Export-Import Bank lose its charter.
“If there’s not going to be reform, we ought to let it die,” the Senate Banking Committee chairman said of the bank Tuesday in the Capitol.
The credit agency is in the news this month because conservatives hope to see its authorization lapse on June 30, while business groups and Democrats have been pushing hard to reauthorize it.
The bank arranges government-backed financing for foreign companies to buy U.S. exports, a function that some conservatives have decried as corporate welfare.
Shelby, an Alabama Republican, on Tuesday essentially sided with conservatives, such as House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who have criticized the bank and are pushing to end it.
He discounted the possibility that reauthorization would run through his banking panel, which has jurisdiction over the bank.
That was already perceived as a remote possibility. Supporters, such as Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., are in the process of trying to tie a reauthorization bill to larger legislation to give it a chance of passing both the Senate and House.
With the legislation they have sought to advance, a reauthorization through 2019 authored by Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., they will not receive support from Shelby.
He said two hearings on the bank’s charter last week, including testimony from the bank’s head, Fred Hochberg, “exacerbated some of my concerns.” With the vast majority of exports transacted without help from the bank, he said, it’s necessary to ask why the government is subsidizing some deals.
“I believe that if at the end of the day it expires, we really won’t miss it,” Shelby said.
