South Carolina’s top Republicans are all signing on for reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, breaking with the “conservative” wing of their party in the U.S. House:
Governor Haley, Senators Graham and Scott Support Ex-Im Bank Reauthorization
WASHINGTON – South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott have written to congressional leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate expressing support for the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank.
“As elected officials from a state where thousands of hardworking families benefit from exports, we urge you to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) before its charter expires this year,” wrote Haley, Graham and Scott. “As the official export credit agency of the United States, Ex-Im is a vital export finance tool to the businesses in our state – at no cost to American taxpayers.
“Ex-Im allows South Carolina businesses to compete globally on a level playing field. Without Ex-Im our local businesses would be forced into a global market with foreign competitors that receive extensive support from their own export credit programs. Allowing Ex-Im to expire will deliberately disadvantage American businesses and lead to increased unemployment.”
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This shouldn’t be surprising, for two reasons:
- The Ex-Im Bank is hugely important to Boeing, which is in turn hugely important to SC politicos.
- The GOP sentiment for shutting it down seems pretty much confined to the extreme wing in the House, and outside advocacy groups. Senate Republicans are broadly supporting reauthorization.
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I was just thinking how odd it is to think of Tim Scott as one of top three GOP officeholders in SC. He emerged into prominence so recently, I haven’t gotten used to it. Part of it is that I’ve never even met the guy. Another part is that if I try to think of things he has DONE in office, I can’t think of anything. He’s just sort of THERE, holding the office but not making any sort of mark on my consciousness.
And then I remembered how weird it is to think of Nikki Haley the same way. It was so very recently that she was a House backbencher whom the leadership either ignored or frowned upon.
In this group, Lindsey Graham is by FAR the elder statesman.
Which also seems a BIT weird. He’s only been in the Senate since January 2003. Before that, South Carolina’s U.S. senators had been in office almost my entire life. Up until then, our JUNIOR senator had held the office since 1965…
Back when Robert and I were talking about a comic strip, one of the characters would be this incredibly old, wrinkled, bent-over figure who looked as old as Methuselah, whom we called the Junior Senator.
We also played around with names for the leading pols of our fictional Southern state, including Grits Holler and Storm Thunder…
At least out GOP contingent is consistent. As long as a huge corporation gets the benefit our Republican crowd is eager and willing to spend taxpayer money. Isn’t this a form of picking winners? Of course it is. At least the libertarian wing of the Republican party understands that this is a type of corporate welfare. But since the Obama economic juggernaut rolls on, as evidenced by todays report than we actually ran a budget SURPLUS in June, at least we can afford a bit of corporate welfare. Still it would be better to spend money on local businesses and infrastructure improvements.
small business also uses the ex-Im bank.
on NPR today they were discussing this issue and mentioned a kayak company that has used it for exporting their goods overseas.
Without the guarantees from the bank, they would have to lay off staff .