Tea Party Challenges Obama, K Street on Corporate Welfare
Photo Credit: Kevin Dietsch
The battleground is the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports — mostly Boeing jets — by issuing taxpayer-backed financing to foreign buyers. In 2008, candidate Obama aptly described Ex-Im as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”
Obama has spent four years pumping steroids into Ex-Im, setting a record $35.7 billion in taxpayer-backed financing last year. Ex-Im’s biggest subsidy program is its loan guarantees, and the agency doled out $14.5 billion of those last year, with $12.2 billion going to subsidize Boeing jets. Piloting Ex-Im as chairman for those four years has been Fred Hochberg. Late last month, Obama announced he is nominating Hochberg for a second term.
As Hochberg used the agency’s annual conference on Thursday to defend and extol his tenure, the conservative Club for Growth — a significant money source for the Tea Party insurgency in the GOP — came out against his appointment. The club announced that it would include Hochberg’s confirmation vote in its annual scorecard. In other words, if a Republican senator wants to avoid a Tea Party primary challenge, he or she would do well to oppose Hochberg.
Hochberg’s nomination would be yet another Tea Party-vs.-K Street battle within the GOP. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is firmly in Hochberg’s camp. At Ex-Im’s conference (where JPMorgan Chase was named Lender of the Year), Hochberg gave the Chairman’s Award to chamber President Tom Donohue to thank him for his group’s successful effort fighting off a Tea Party-led effort to kill Ex-Im, whose charter was up for renewal last year.
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