The National Association of Manufacturers, a powerful K Street industry group which spent $17 million on lobbying last year, is having its fly-in lobby week right now. Sen. Heidi Keitkamp, D-N.D., tried to advance one of NAM’s priorities when she filed a unanimous consent motion to circumvent the Banking Committee and bring to the Senate floor a nomination for the board of the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports.
This nomination is a priority for big business, because Ex-Im’s board currently lacks a quorum. Without a quorum, it cannot approve financing deals of greater than $10 million.
Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby objected to Heitkamp’s request, and Democrats took the opportunity to argue in favor of the agency, which President Obama once called “little more than a slush fund for corporate welfare.”
Tellingly, Heitkamp’s first three speakers for Ex-Im’s 8-figure and 9-figure deals were Washington Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and New York Senator Charles Schumer. Cantwell and Murray represent Boeing, whose exports account for 70 percent of Ex-Im’s large loan guarantees. Schumer represents Wall Street. Ex-Im is “free money” for large banks, mostly JP Morgan, because the large deals currently impossible tend to be taxpayer guarantees of private-bank loans to foreign buyers.
Schumer argued that without $10-million guarantees from Ex-Im, American companies are “losing deals to Siemens and other” foreign companies. But Siemens is a leading beneficiary of and lobbyist for Ex-Im. In fact Siemens won Ex-Im’s 2014 Deal of the Year.
“We have a lot of little companies that need Ex-Im Bank,” Schumer also said. But Ex-Im is still able to extend financing for smaller deals. The large, long-term deals impossible without a quorum are mostly for Boeing.
Conservative Sen. Mike Lee took to the floor and called for the full repeal of Ex-Im which he called “a breeding ground for cronyism and for corruption.” As a second-best, Lee said Ex-Im should be constrained from making its massive deals.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
