Many liberal writers agree that our government shouldn’t be subsidizing Wall Street lenders, foreign buyers, and major U.S. manufacturers through taxpayer-backed financing for exports — but they still can’t bring themselves to side with those filthy Tea Partiers trying to kill the Export-Import Bank.

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein can’t really defend Ex-Im, but he declares it “disappointing” that conservatives are waging their anti-corporate welfare debate on the battlefield of Ex-Im. Why? Because he sees other corporate welfare programs as worse — the Small Business Administration, crop subsidies, crop-insurance subsidies, ethanol mandate, federal flood insurance, shipping subsidies, corporate tax loopholes, and so on.