It’s one things when liberals support corporate welfare in the form of green-energy grants — that’s the norm. But who would have thought the progressives at The Nation would line up behind a corporate welfare agency that dedicates a majority of its subsidies to helping Boeing sell its jets?
Sure enough, The Nation’s George Zornick, who otherwise spends his column inches knocking “1 Percenters,” “Wall Street Favorite” Republicans, Goldman Sachs, “Corporate Election Donors,” and the like, has a blog post not only defending the Export-Import Bank but painting its opponents as extreme.
“Far-Right Republicans Are Ready to Cripple an Important Export Agency” is his headline.
He writes “The Ex-Im Bank, which Franklin Roosevelt created in 1934 by executive order, provides loans, guarantees and insurance for domestic exporters in order to level the trade playing field—it is essentially a job creation tool, since it finances sales of US exports to overseas buyers. Every industrialized nation has a similar export credit agency.”
The Nation blog post doesn’t mention that a majority of its subsidy dollars are for Boeing’s sales, or that most of the agency’s big deals are taxpayer guarantees of loans by huge banks, including the likes of Wells Fargo and Bank of America. So when foreign companies start defaulting, Boeing and Wall Street are made whole while Mom & Pop pick up the tab.
No progressive notion of equity, fairness, or defending the little guy can explain liberal support for this agency. The most likely explanation is simple partisanship — if Jim DeMint thinks it’s bad and Obama thinks it’s good, The Nation writers side with Obama. Which is really too bad, because opposing corporate welfare is really a place where the Left and Right should be able to unite to fight against the crooked center.
