Tea-party zealots fast crippling US business efforts abroad
With all the suffocating legislation handed down to American businesses in recent years, why would our congressional leaders shut down legislation that promotes healthy job creation and costs taxpayers nothing?
Congress is playing with fire when it attacks the export economy by shutting down the federal Export-Import Bank. The bank has been a vital cog in our export system, providing loans and insurance to help American companies sell their products overseas. Despite its importance to the economy — the bank supported nearly $30 billion in exports last year — it remains under assault from tea-party leaders like Texas’s Jeb Hensarling and Ted Cruz, who think government has no role to play in helping American businesses succeed.
Yet they ignore the lesson of the last recession. The damage from shutting down the bank this summer isn’t limited to exports. Like the fallout from the housing bubble and Wall Street crisis, it is spreading like wildfire across our nation.
The Export-Import Bank is not some rogue, wasteful agency. The opposite is true. Ex-Im has been one of the smallest federal agencies out there. It is a cautious lender with strict underwriting rules and a default rate far lower than that of private banks. The bank pays for its own operations out of interest and fees on its services. Most years it runs a surplus as one of the few federal agencies that makes money for the taxpayer. Over the past two decades the bank has generated $7 billion in revenue above and beyond its operating costs.
Read more: http://www.wacotrib.com/opinion/columns/guest_columns/cindy-lewis-guest-columnist-tea-party-zealots-fast-crippling-us/article_ffdc7d22-3143-53d3-9250-82061d0172e2.html
