President Obama and the Senate Democratic leadership these days are standing with the Chamber of Commerce to defend corporate welfare from a conservative attack.

The Senate, heeding White House guidance, was poised at press time to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that subsidizes major banks and U.S. exporters like Boeing and General Electric, and also increase the amount of taxpayer money the bank can put at risk. This clearly undermines Obama’s rhetoric about battling the special interests, not to mention his State of the Union pledge of “no more handouts,” but it also gives Republicans a potential political opening.