The Export-Import Bank’s biggest congressional critic on Friday seized upon a report that the bank cooperated closely with Boeing in writing rules that applied to the aircraft maker.
Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee with oversight over Ex-Im, used the report to re-issue a call to allow the export credit agency to expire when its charter runs out at the end of June.
“Once again, we see why the Export-Import Bank has so richly earned its nickname the ‘Bank of Boeing’ and why congressional tinkering won’t fix it,” Hensarling said in a statement responding to the report Friday. “Ex-Im is the poster child of Washington insider cronyism and corporate welfare, and Congress should let it expire.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in a story in Friday morning’s edition of the newspaper that Boeing, the greatest beneficiary of Ex-Im’s credit programs, engaged in an “extraordinary level of coordination” with Ex-Im in crafting rules relating to aircraft sales in 2012.
The Journal used emails obtained through an open-records request to report that Boeing was able to shape the rules to satisfy outside critics of Ex-Im without crimping its own foreign sales.
Ex-Im facilitates U.S. exporters’ overseas sales through loans, guarantees and other financing. It is currently the subject of fierce congressional debate, as Hensarling and other critics who regard it as undue government interference into markets aim to see it expire.
The bank was reauthorized in 2012 with reforms, but Hensarling said Friday that the news of Boeing’s involvement in shaping those rules was reason to end, rather than reform, the bank.
“Now we’re learning that Ex-Im’s idea of reform is to let big corporations substantially write the rules for their own benefit,” he said.
