Republicans Will Allow Export-Import Bank to Expire Under Senate Plan
The U.S. Export-Import Bank’s charter will lapse next week if the Republican-led Congress follows a path outlined by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that would delay a vote on reauthorizing the bank until July.
McConnell said June 23 he won’t block efforts to combine legislation reauthorizing Ex-Im with a transportation-funding package. The highway bill is an “obvious” vehicle for the bank, said McConnell, who opposes extending Ex-Im.
The bank is set to lapse June 30, while federal highway funding will expire July 31.
House Speaker John Boehner said June 24 he expects the Senate will attach the bank reauthorization to a “must-pass” bill. He reiterated a commitment to an “open process” that would allow bank opponents in his chamber to try to block an extension of the Ex-Im charter.
The bank provides loans, loan guarantees and insurance to aid overseas sales by U.S. companies.
The fight has pitted two traditionally Republican constituencies against each other: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has pushed hard to keep the bank, contending it supports American jobs. Small-government groups, such as Club for Growth, argue that it should go because it interferes with the free market by choosing which deals will receive financial backing.
A lapse in the bank’s charter would prevent it from approving new financing. It still would be able to administer the transactions it already has underwritten.
House Democrats, led by Representative Maxine Waters of California, the top member of her party on the Financial Services Committee, said they would try to force a vote June 24 to reauthorize the bank. A similar effort by Waters failed last week.
Bank supporters say the Senate and House would reauthorize Ex-Im if allowed to vote on the issue. They have struggled to get a floor vote on the matter because top Republicans, including the two committee chairmen with oversight of the bank — House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and Senate Banking Chairman Richard Shelby — oppose extending Ex-Im’s charter.
The Senate strongly backed reauthorizing the bank in a June 10 test vote, bolstering its supporters’ argument that a majority of Congress wants to keep Ex-Im’s charter from expiring. That 65-31 vote sought to keep alive a proposed amendment to extend the bank’s charter, but the amendment was withdrawn after the roll call.
“I gave the supporters of Ex-Im a chance to demonstrate that the votes are there,” McConnell said June 23.
The Senate doesn’t plan to debate Highway Trust Fund legislation until July.
Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, said in an e-mail that the highway legislation was the “next likely bill to be signed” by President Obama.
“People have suggested that would be the bill to amend” with the Export-Import Bank reauthorization, he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) an Ex- Im Bank supporter, said in May that the bank’s charter probably would lapse before being extended as part of the highway funding legislation.
The 81-year-old bank, previously renewed regularly without controversy, has become a target of conservative Republicans who say it benefits only a few large corporations that don’t need government assistance.
Five public U.S. companies — General Electric Co., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc. and units of General Dynamics Corp. and United Technologies Corp. — had overseas customers who received about $10 billion in loan authorizations or long-term guarantees from the bank last year.
