Latest intra-repub battleground: Dem bill to fund government's export promotion agency

Conservatives in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives, emboldened by the recent demise of majority leader Eric Cantor, are coalescing around a drive to to defund a state-run bank that boosts the American export market.

Meanwhile the White House and Democrats in Congress are relishing the prospect of a battle over a bank that serves small and medium-sized businesses and, according to its own analysis, has supported more than 1.2 million jobs in the US over the last five years. The bank is self-sustaining and claims that last year it actually returned $1bn to the Treasury. Democrats in the House on Tuesday introduced a bill that would extend the bank’s charter for seven years.

The bank’s reauthorisation was one of the first subjects raised, for example, during a closed-door gathering of GOP members to question candidates standing for majority leader and chief whip prior to last week’s elections. Several Republicans, according to sources present in the meeting, wanted assurances that McCarthy would not give floor time to a bill to reauthorise the bank, which critics have labeled “corporate welfare”.

Four days later, after winning the majority leader role, McCarthy appeared on Fox News and announced he would be willing to allow the bank’s charter to expire. “One of the problems with government is it's going to take hard-earned money so others do things that the private sector can do. That's what Ex-Im Bank does,” he said. His comments were immediately welcome by conservatives.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/ex-im-bank-republican-infighting-over-fate-of-government-run-business-lender

Who would have thought this agency would be the focus of far-right congressmen and their anti-government agenda. You just never know with republicans. Of course the Export-Import Bank was created in 1934 and is a legacy of the "evil" (form the point-of-view of a republican hardliner) FDR. It's never too late for them to eliminate another New Deal program.