The “Securing American Jobs Through Exports Act of 2011” comes to the House floor for a vote Wednesday and while the title is one of those only in Congress kind of monstrosities, the bill’s purpose is to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank and increase its lending authority.
It’s a measure that divides Republicans, with tea party-minded members eager to gut the Bank and (horror of horrors) let private companies find private sector financing for their overseas sales. A number of conservative groups have run up the black flag on the bill as well, including the club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, Heritage Action.
There’s good reason to want to see the Bank go the way of the Dodo. But unlike flightless birds, Washington bureaucracies are notoriously hard to kill, particularly when they are linked, however tenuously, to protecting American jobs.
So rather than eliminate the Bank outright, House majority leader Eric Cantor has taken the long march approach. The current deal he’s struck with House Democrats seeks to add what are said to be a number of taxpayer safeguards. Cato’s Sallie James, a noted Bank critic, gives us a look behind the paywall of Inside U.S. Trade, which provides this summary of events:
The bill contains a longer reauthorization, and a higher lending cap, than what was included in an initial draft bill floated by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in March. That draft bill would have renewed the bank’s charter only through June 2013, and would have raised the lending cap to $113 billion, up from the current level of $100 billion.
At the same time, the compromise bill reflects some of the demands of Cantor and other Republicans who are wary of reauthorizing the activities of a bank they say puts taxpayer money at risk and distorts the free market.
For instance, it conditions further increases in the lending cap, to $140 billion for fiscal year 2014, on the bank maintaining a default rate on outstanding loans that is below two percent and submitting other required reports. It also includes language from Cantor’s draft instructing the president to enter into negotiations with other countries to substantially reduce official export financing in general and for aircraft in particular, with the goal of ultimately eliminating such financing altogether.
Under suspension of rules, which is a procedure typically reserved for non-controversial legislation, debate is limited to 40 minutes and the bill must garner a two-thirds majority to pass.
I’ve been told Cantor does want the Bank to wind down operations, and prefers that private entities seek market-based solutions for their export sales. These “reform” measures are meant to add at least some discipline to the Bank’s operation. But James takes a far different view:
…the ostensible brakes that the Republican leadership have insisted placing on Ex-Im…really amount to the usual Washington ways of pretending they are implementing real reform…
That’s one way to look at it.
But consider that last paragraph from the Inside U.S. Trade snippet again: “Under suspension of rules, which is a procedure typically reserved for non-controversial legislation, debate is limited to 40 minutes and the bill must garner a two-thirds majority to pass.”
That means the bill needs 290 votes to win. It’s entirely possible it could reach that threshold even if a number of Republicans bolt. But only 146 “no” votes stops this measure in its tracks, so it’s also entirely possible the bill fails.
It’s enough to make me wonder whether Cantor is playing this one so that he gets a bipartisanship credit for the deal, while throwing the anti-Bank members of his own caucus a bone.
