Export Bank Connection for Chamber of Commerce? : Taxpayers Lose?

What this comes down to is who has the power to grant favors, loans, and who will benefit the most politically? The question that remains is why can't the free market to do the same job, a much better job and not cost the taxpayers $billions.

Where is the common sense? The good financial logic? Just politics as usual? And what is the actual agenda of the Chamber in this case?

Chamber of Commerce Spends Big to Save Export-Import Bank
Source: Stephen Moore, "Using Tax Dollars to Lobby for More Tax Dollars," Heritage Foundation, May 27, 2015.

June 4, 2015

How much do taxpayers have to pay off Boeing to make the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) finally and irrevocably go away? If the feds wrote a check to Boeing for $100 million, would they then let the Ex-Im Bank fade away after the current portfolio winds down?

Boeing is the largest beneficiary of the Ex-Im Bank. The bank provides subsidized loans and insurance contracts to foreign companies that buy American exports. Ex-Im Bank doles out billions of dollars of loans and insurance subsidies every year and has become the poster child for corporate cronyism in Washington.

Would America's exports grind to a halt without the Ex-Im Bank?

• Getting the federal government out of export financing would save taxpayers from having to cover the bank's $2 billion shortfall projected over the next decade by the Congressional Budget Office.
• Without an Ex-Im Bank, which finances just 2 percent of U.S. exports, private firms would provide the insurance and credit these companies need, but at market rates that reflect risk of default.
• Beyond the cost and risk of its $140 billion portfolio of taxpayer-guaranteed loans, is that it turns business into advocates for big government. This also explains why the largest business lobby in America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is spending $1 million on a campaign to save the program.

The Chamber of Commerce normally does great work promoting pro-growth economics and while they may win this Ex-Im Bank battle, its overall cause will be hurt in the end.