Republican Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling opened today’s hearing on the Export-Import Bank by excoriating corporate welfare and calling out big businesses by name in something of a populist speech:
And big Wall Street banks apparently benefit as well. As reported in the press recently, one former JP Morgan and Citigroup banker said of Ex-Im’s credit guarantees, “it’s free money.”
So if you’re a politically-connected bank or company that benefits from Ex-Im, no doubt you would like it to continue. After all, it’s a sweetheart deal for you. Taxpayers shoulder the risk and you get the reward.
Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., also criticized Ex-Im as the “Big Business Administration,” explicitly naming General Electric and Caterpillar.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats were singing hosannas to corporate America.
Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash., warned darkly that if Ex-Im dies, we might “wake up in 20 years” in a world with no Boeing.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., pointed to the Chamber-of-Commerce-led lobbying effort to save Ex-Im and declared, “865 businesses and associations can’t be wrong!”
This is a real realignment in American politics. Democrats are becoming explicitly corporatist, while Republicans are slowly shedding that garb.
Related: Liberal David Dayen at Salon writes, “Nowadays, Democrats are defending Ex-Im, and the right is calling it ‘corporate welfare.’ It wasn’t always that way.”
