When President Obama attacked Americans for Prosperity during the 2010 campaigns, he suggested they might be a front for “a foreign-controlled corporation … a big oil company, or a big bank.”
So it’s entertaining that AFP is now telling Obama to kill an agency that subsidizes foreign-controlled corporations buying stuff from large corporations including big oil companies by giving a taxpayer guarantee to big banks.
By calling on Obama to veto the Export-Import Bank, AFP is lining up against all the corporate bogey monsters Obama and many on the Left invoke in order to brand free-market groups like AFP as “front groups.”
Foreign corporations are the actual recipients of Ex-Im’s discounted loans and taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. Big oil loves Ex-Im — the American Petroleum Institute signed a letter calling for Ex-Im’s reauthorization. And, again, Ex-Im’s biggest block of subsidies are loan guarantees, which is one reason Citi, for instance, signed that same letter.
Obama, barring a bizarre reversal, will not veto the bill, so the ad should be seen as AFP’s attempt to highlight Obama’s hypocrisy (he called Ex-Im “corporate welfare” in 2008), and to try to change the narrative on big corporations in politics.
