Editorial: Businesses, trade losers in ideological struggle over Export-Import Bank

The Export-Import Bank could be the latest victim of the power struggle within the Republican Party between the ideologues and the pragmatists. And the biggest loser would be Washington, the most trade-dependent state in the union.

If put to a vote of Congress, this important program for American export businesses would easily be reauthorized, as it has been many times before. But an ideologue is the chairman of the committee where the renewal bill is being smothered, so the deadline for reauthorization, which was June 30, has come and gone.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, called the lapse of the Ex-Im Bank charter “a small step toward renewing a competitive free-market economy.”

It’s actually a unilateral decision to put the United States at a disadvantage with other nations, which is why business interests have decried Hensarling’s decision to deny a vote. A total of $3.8 million in Washington state trade deals have been put on hold, pending reauthorization of the bank, which provides loan guarantees that aren’t available through private banks.

At this point, the business community is urging the Senate to attach the bill to must-pass legislation, such as a renewal of the Highway Trust Fund. Then again, the Highway Trust Fund is itself on the brink because GOP hard-liners have refused to compromise on that issue, too.

The debt-ceiling brinkmanship is another prime example of showdowns becoming more important than the health of the economy.

To the hard-liners, you’re either anti-government or you’re impure. That uncompromising attitude squeezes out small-government, pro-business Republicans. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has been an advocate for overhauling some of the bank’s practices, but a bill that would’ve done so is also languishing in Hensarling’s committee.

Steve Wilburn, a businessman who relies on the bank, tried to persuade Hensarling and came away frustrated. He told the New York Times, “The party I chose when Ronald Reagan was president has abandoned me. I don’t understand this party.”

The Ex-Im Bank is more than 80 years old and has been a resounding success for businesses at no net loss for the government. The bank is criticized as risky and a purveyor of corporate welfare, but its default rate is less than 1 percent and it produced a $675 million surplus for the government last year.

The bank supports more than 80,000 jobs in Washington, and more than 164,000 nationwide. Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar are beneficiaries, but so are smaller businesses, such as SCAFCO in Spokane. Its largest customer is Bangladesh, for whom SCAFCO makes grain bins. But without Ex-Im’s services, Bangladesh would have to go shopping in another country.

Sixty-five senators, including 22 Republicans, demonstrated in a recent vote that they support the bank. So that chamber is the last hope to snatch an economically important program from the jaws of ideologues.