Hillary Clinton on Friday slammed Republican presidential candidates for opposing efforts to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank, and said it’s a sign they won’t support government programs to help small businesses.
“It’s wrong that candidates for president, who really should know better, are jumping on this bandwagon,” she said before a small group of businesspeople in New Hampshire. “In fact, it seems as though they would rather threaten the livelihoods of those 164,000 jobs than stand up to the Tea Party and talk radio.”
“It’s wrong, it’s embarrassing,” she added. So far, every declared GOP candidate for president has come out against the bank.
Republicans in Congress have been looking to terminate or at least scale back the Export-Import Bank, which provides loans and loan guarantees to overseas companies in order to make it easier for them to finance U.S. goods and services.
Republicans have said the bank is essentially corporate welfare, and that the huge companies that use it, like Boeing, wouldn’t have any problem financing their exports. Supporters of the bank say it makes money for the government, but studies have shown that this is only true when government accounting standards are used, and that fair-value standards show Ex-Im financing actually costs taxpayers money.
Still, Clinton said in New Hampshire that the bank is a vital tool for U.S. companies, especially since other countries offer similar subsidies.
“Most of the big countries we compete against, they subsidize their businesses to be able to export overseas,” she said.
“The idea we would remove this relatively small but vital source of funding for our businesses to compete is absolutely backwards,” she added. “That’s not what we need to be doing in this very competitive global economy.”
Dan Holler of Heritage Action, which wants to see the bank’s charter expire, told the Washington Examiner that Clinton’s support for the bank shows she is too close to big companies.
“Hillary is standing up for Wall Street and mega corporations, which is exactly what she will be doing throughout her entire campaign,” Holler said. “When Republicans end the bank next month, it will provide a stunning contrast for the voters.”
Without action by Congress, the bank’s charter will expire at the end of June.
