Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Looks like the Chamber of Commerce is opening its coffers for a million-dollar ad blitz supporting the Export-Import bank. The ads will feature small businesses that rely on the Ex-Im Bank to keep their businesses functioning and competitive. Of course, the ads fail to mention that an overwhelming majority of the Bank’s funding goes to large multi-national corporations like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar.
In fact, a Heritage Foundation report found that “barely 20 percent of the bank’s financing benefits small business. That equates to about one-half of 1 percent of all U.S. small businesses.”
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce will launch a multistate advertising push exceeding $1 million on Monday to build support for renewing the charter of a financing arm of the U.S. government that is a top target of conservative Republicans.
At issue is the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which will no longer be able to guarantee new financing in July if lawmakers don’t reauthorize its charter. The advertising campaign, covering at least 10 states, seeks to shore up support for lawmakers—primarily Republicans—who may be uneasy to support the bank when it is under heavy fire from conservative lawmakers and influential political groups such as Heritage Action, Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity.
The Ex-Im Bank is an outdated corporate welfare program that allows big business insiders to collude with the federal government to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. If the Chamber really wants to help U.S. businesses, they should run ads calling for government to lower the tax and regulatory burdens that currently hurt small business owners’ abilities to compete in the global economy.
Currently, the GOP presidential primary field appears to be unanimously against the Export-Import Bank.
