Tag: export-import bank

Did Senate Democrats trade TPP/TPA for a meaningless Ex-Im vote? …Mayyybe?

Well, this is interesting:

The Senate on Thursday voted to break a filibuster to advance legislation that would empower President Obama to complete a major, 12-nation Pacific trade accord, an integral step toward approval of a key piece of the president’s ambitious trade agenda.

The 62-38 vote to end debate on a carefully brokered deal to give the president trade promotion authority came in a dramatic moment, when Democratic senators secured a commitment from Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and majority leader, that the Senate will vote on an extension of authorization for the Export-Import Bank, which faces extinction June 30 without congressional action.

Continue reading Did Senate Democrats trade TPP/TPA for a meaningless Ex-Im vote? …Mayyybe?

Elizabeth Warren’s, ahem, ‘Crony Capitalism.’

Don’t watch a politician’s lips. Watch his or her hands.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) may market herself as a progressive populist, but when forced to choose between everyday Americans and billion dollar international corporations, Warren sides with the corporations.

Senator Warren believes that the Export-Import Bank helps create American jobs and spur economic growth,” Warren spokeswoman Lacey Rose wrote in an e-mail to Bloomnberg News, “She looks forward to reviewing re-authorization legislation if and when it is introduced.”

Townhall goes on to note the bit about how the Export-Import Bank is “little more than a fund for corporate welfare” – and if you don’t like that characterization, take it up with Barack Obama: that’s what he called it.  But the corporations that use the bank in question know how to reward their friends… and I guess that Elizabeth Warren wants to be those corporations’ special-special friend.

The funny part is, I don’t care too much that yet another progressive politician out there can’t sustain her own movement’s rhetoric. But you’d think that this would start bothering actual progressives after a while.  Well, actually, you wouldn’t: everybody knows that progressives have no self-esteem when it comes to politicians who lie to them, after all…

Via

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Struggle over whether to kill Export-Import Bank picking up steam.

You know, when I first saw this…

…well, the first thing that I thought was Actually, I wouldn’t mind Ariel Stryker going to fetch Edward Snowden and getting him in front of an American grand jury.  But you have to expect a certain amount of that sort of thing from hard-shell libertarians; live and let live, says I.  So I guess that the second thing that I thought was Killing the Export-Import Bank is probably not gonna happen. Continue reading Struggle over whether to kill Export-Import Bank picking up steam.

New House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy… wants to kill the Export-Import Bank.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: the Export-Import Bank is squarely in the middle of things that I typically go rah-rah over out of a sense of solidarity with the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.  I can’t keep track of everything, after all*.  But apparently this is making people sit up and blink:

 House Majority Leader-elect Kevin McCarthy says Congress should let the Export-Import Bank expire, the biggest blow yet to the imperiled subsidy agency whose charter expires this fall.

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked McCarthy if he agrees with “conservatives who say that the Export-Import Bank is a form of crony capitalism and it should be put out of business — allowed to expire.”

I forget who said this first**, but fear really is a wonderful motivator. Continue reading New House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy… wants to kill the Export-Import Bank.