How Will Corporate America Ever Survive Without the Export-Import Bank?

To listen to the wails from Democrats and the socialistic "financial media," you'd think business will cease to exist in America. Certainly, American corporations will no longer be able to compete on a global scale without the help of our government.

You see, the big meanie conservative Republicans in the House allowed the Export-Import bank authorization to lapse - so now, other than previously agreed-upon commitments, the bank is no more.

Last week, General Electric, one of the largest corporations on the planet, "announced it would create 500 jobs in France instead of the United States because it can no longer access the kind of financing once offered by the now shuttered agency."

"Congress left us no choice when it failed to reauthorize the Ex-Im bank this summer," said John Rice, G.E.'s vice chairman. You do have a choice Mr. Rice - but I'll address that in a bit.

The liberal Fiscal Times felt the need to add: "but G.E.'s announcements suggest that more companies may start blaming Congress for destroying American jobs."

Guess they got that right out of the Democrat playbook. It is widely known that the spineless Republican leadership can't stomach criticism. But to that, my man Ted Cruz said: "I understand the crony capitalism is an easier way to do business, simply getting politicians in Washington to carve out billions in favors for giant corporations, but it's not what Congress should be doing."

I would only correct Sen. Cruz on one thing: it's not crony capitalism, but crony corporatism.

"In a speech last week to the Business Roundtable in Washington, he [Obama] urged executives to pressure Congress to renew the agency." Obama weighed in by saying, "I think you have to flood the zone and let them know this is important." Ah, yes - never the president - always the community agitator.

In talking about the poster child of crony corporatism, Jeb Hensarling (R-Tx) stated that, "It's troubling that the head of Pres. Obama's job Council [G.E. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt] is announcing G.E. is leaving Connecticut because the states taxes are too high and is choosing to send jobs overseas because U.S. taxpayer-provided subsidies are too low."

Now, leave it to the stenographers of the left, the New York Times, to provide an example of the devastating fallout by axing the Ex-Im bank. They write that, "The damage this is doing to our economy is starting to become clear."

Because of the Republicans, Boeing has lost an $85 million satellite contract that Asia Broadcast Satellite canceled, "expressly because there was no Ex-Im support."

$85 million sounds like a lot, but it isn't—not relatively speaking. The entire satellite contract is several million dollars less than the cost of a single Boeing 737. And back in 2013, Boeing lost a contract to competitor Saab worth $4 billion. Now that's real money—and that's also business. You win some, you lose some.

So why can't these huge crony corporations just finance their own projects? It must be because the contracts are just so huge. I mean, $85 million is still a big chunk.

Well, in fact, they could, if they didn't have someone else's pockets to pick—mainly ours, the taxpayers. In fact, Boeing has over $9.5 billion in cash. So that lost satellite contract is about 0.9%, less than 1%. For someone who makes $30,000 per year, that's like losing around five dollars per week.

But the biggest crony corporatist hypocrite is General Electric. They threatened to move a paltry 500 jobs out of the United States because they can no longer scam the taxpayers through the leftist government credit agency created as part of Franklin Roosevelt's socialist New Deal.

Here's another fact: GE has around $100 billion in cash. In other words, they can easily self-finance any project under the sun. So, really, this is just extortion.

I'm proud that House conservatives have prevailed this time. But with the left, it's never over. Hopefully, the conservatives will stick to their guns.

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said the Ex-Im bank "should go away and we have a natural wind-down process. It's the most natural progression, natural wind-down you could come up with and, oh, by the way, it happens to be free enterprise and the free-market way of doing things."

Well said. After you're done with the Export Import Bank, how about moving on to the next agency. Maybe the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the EPA, etc.

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