May 08, 2015
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life."
--Abraham Lincoln
Most Americans have never heard of the Export-Import Bank. Even fewer have heard about the 31 corruption and fraud investigations into the Bank’s system of doling out taxpayer-backed subsidies and loan guarantees to foreign buyers of U.S. exports. And this is exactly why the 81 year-old case study in corporate welfare has a chance of being reauthorized by Congress next month.
This is often how the most dysfunctional government programs and policies become immortal: not necessarily through concerted effort (though the campaign of misinformation currently conducted by Ex-Im apologists doesn’t hurt), but rather by being so obscure as to escape public scrutiny.
Enabling such obscurity to persist – by denouncing the Bank in public while quietly working to renew its charter in private – is fundamentally unconservative. To be a conservative is to be for a government of, by, and for the American people. And such a government cannot not long endure when most of those who know about its export subsidy programs are corporate CEOs, lobbyists, and politicians.
No, this is the governing model of the Left. When then-Senator Barack Obama maligned Ex-Im as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare,” no one seriously expected him to oppose the Bank once elected president. Corporate welfare, cloaked in phony populism, is what progressives do.
But it’s not what most Americans want from their elected representatives.
"But good ideas alone aren’t enough. The truth is that we will lack the moral credibility to do what we must, if we lack the moral courage to do what we should."
The American people elected us not to perpetuate broken government programs, but to fix them. And as former governor Rick Perry rightly observed, “the best way to mend Ex-Im is to end it.”
Conservatives have a multitude of innovative ideas to reform dysfunctional government and put it back to work for the American people. Many of these ideas are getting national attention and praise. But good ideas alone aren’t enough. The truth is that we will lack the moral credibility to do what we must, if we lack the moral courage to do what we should.
The time has finally come to end Ex-Im. The fate of conservative reform depends on it.
