Senate Votes to Reauthorize Ex-Im Bank

But will the House agree?

Creative Commons

Is it utterly impossible to get rid of any federal program, no matter how corrupt or cronyist or useless? The Senate has voted today to amend a highway funding bill that must be passed by the end of the month in order to resurrect the Export-Import Bank, whose federal authorization expired at the top of the month.

Prior to the vote, several senators took to the floor to "Well, I never!" at Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) speech on Friday accusing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) of lying about a deal to bring the bank amendment to vote (After defending bringing the amendment to a vote, McConnell voted against it). There was lots of huffing about decorum and impugning people's character that you can read about here. This all came, incidentally, just minutes after Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) took to the floor to accuse anybody against the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of being servants of the Koch brothers.

Anyway, this doesn't necessarily mean the Export-Import Bank is definitely back, because they still have to get the conservatives of the House on board. Remember, it was the stubbornness of House conservatives (working with Democrats) that helped sunset Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, one of the regulations used to authorize mass domestic surveillance.

More on the terrible Export-Import Bank here.

Comments

[Winston]

Is it utterly impossible to get rid of any federal program, no matter how corrupt or cronyist or useless?

Yes you teahadist anarchist who wants women, children, gays and blacks to be starved and killed.

[Jay Dubya]

That's quite enough young man *puffs pipe* The good men of the Kings Export Utility have financed my orphan powered dirigibles for decades. I will have no harsh language in a discussion of these fine men and women who are kind enough to hold my wallet for me when I have other matters to attend to. *polishes monocle*

[Marshall Gill]

An obvious poser. Who polishes their own monocle?

[Winston]

Seriously cutting any government program will inconvenience someone and they will go on the news to complain and/or protest. And we have a political culture which regards budget cuts as equivalent to genocide so no, getting rid of any department is very hard.

[Winston]

You Know Who Else wanted to export and Import something?

[CatilineWoodchipperConspiracy]

Elaine's boyfriend?

[bob sacomano]

+1000 long matches

[Pathogen]

Pablo Escobar?

[Jerry on the sea]

And of course Graham & McCain voted in favor.

[bob sacomano]

If we can't even get rid of ExIm, what is the point? I seriously hope Hensarling and the House conservatives and libertarians raise holy hell over this and do everything in their power to block reauthorization.

If nothing else, do it for Veronica de Rugy, whose activism on this issue has been stalwart and heroic.

[Hyperion]

House conservatives and libertarians

Well, there are 2 libertarians in the house, so I am sure they will be able to do something about this.

[Wizard with a Woodchipper]

Fuck McConnell. What do the Republicans even stand for anyway? They have played their role out and unless they will change direction, which requires changing leadership, they will have consigned themselves to the dustbin of history.

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

Keep in mind this is the first time the ExIm bank has been expired in 81 years. If the GOP didn't control the Senate, that never would have happened.

[rudehost]

Yep just long enough to convince the idiots that Republicans stand for smaller government but in the end they always vote for it. If they somehow managed to repeal Obamacare they would be like a dog who caught the car. They wouldn't know what to do and would reinstate it the next day. The only reason they vote daily to repeal it is because their base loves it and they know its not actually going to happen. It was the same way with the bank bailout. There are always just enough republican votes for whatever heinous big government scheme needs passing.

[Bob Meyer]

" What do the Republicans even stand for anyway?"

Impotence, surrender, cronyism, subsidies, going "abroad in search of monsters to destroy". Take your pick, or take all of them.

[Ichabod]

Vote tally: http://www.senate.gov/legislat.....vote=00254

[Wizard with a Woodchipper]

Interesting: all the Nays were mostly conservative or libertarian leaning Republicans. Every Dem present voted to reauthorize.

[lap83]

The best you can

[lap83]

Ugh, I can't deal with Reason commenting anymore. I don't even remember what I was going to say exactly.

Something about Republicans being less consistently cronyist than Democrats

[John DeWitt]

Interesting. Kind of the Eeyore version of Obama's campaign slogan.

[In League with the Dark Ones]

And the Democrats are the anti-corporate party.

[PapayaSF]

A clever GOP would highlight this sort of thing in attack ads: "These Democrats voted for corporate welfare." But that would require a clever GOP.

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

The Stupid Party gonna stupid, yo

[Migrant Log Chipper]

Kind of hard to argue that when half of the party of stupid in the Senate voted FOR. Hat tip to my R Senator Daines who said nay. Brickbats to Tester who at least for a while pretended not to run with the team blue herd and be a neutral voice. That mask is off.

[Hyperion]

Yeah, nice that the one libertarian leaning Republican voted Nay.

[B. Woodrow Chippenhaus]

I expected it from Shaheen, but Kelly Ayotte also voted yea. Fuck. Not voting for her next time around.

[PapayaSF]

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Do you think a Democrat replacing Ayotte would be better?

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

Gotta be careful with that logic, as it can easily lead to the good getting less so.

[AdamJ]

Yeah, that's the same logic that has the African American vote going Democrat every time.

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

Indeed. If you reliably vote for one side, you get taken for granted. But if you hold out for too much then you just get ignored (this is libertarians' usual problem). It's a difficult game, this voting thing.

[PapayaSF]

No, the "logic" of the black vote is something else, if it counts as logic at all.

[Apatheist ?_??]

It's more like, "don't let the shitty be the enemy of the slightly more shitty" but keep deceiving yourself.

[PapayaSF]

Why is that deceiving myself? Most of the time in politics, it's a matter of avoiding the slightly more shitty. No candidate is perfect, for libertarians of any degree. But as I often say, we didn't get into the bankrupt, semi-socialist mess we're in because the Socialist Party won elections. We're here because the socialists worked incrementally, including taking over the Democratic Party. Fabian Socialism worked. Libertarianism has little chance at winning elections, but libertarians can sway elections toward the more libertarian candidate.

[Migrant Log Chipper]

As a convert in the last decade to libertarianism, you are dreaming.

[rudehost]

Sorry but it is only the lesser of two evils if the republicans move things in a libertarian direction. Moving things just slightly more slowly in a statist direction is not something we should support. It moves us ever further away from fixing things and makes us worse off. Voting for that is admitting you have given up and just want a more leisurely drive over the cliff.

[NYer]

Except Ayotte comes from the so-called live free or die state. So yeah I think libertarians and conservatives in NH should expect better and demand better. For example, I hate Shaheen but I'm not sure how the Masshole Scott Brown would've been much better. Given those choices I vote Libertarian in the general election. Now I don't find Ayotte to be as awful as Brown or as atrocious as Shaheen but those are rather low bars. It was insane for the Republicans to nominate Scott Brown for the Senate. And it was absurd for the GOP to nominate a Maryland Cronyist like Havenstien over the libertarian-leaning Hemingway for Governor.

I came to New Hampshire seeking to escape the insanity of New York. If New Hampshire Republicans keep voting for crappy candidates in the primary under the delusion they're more electable, then I can definitely see the NH GOP going the way of the NY GOP. God Help us.

[Wizard with a Woodchipper]

It's not just the bank of Boeing, NBC gets quite a bit of taxpayer cash, too. I'd like to see which politicians these two companies support through campaign donations.

[RightNut]

...as senior Republicans united to defend an institution they revere and take down a junior colleague of their own party who's gone from being an occasional nuisance, to a threat to the Senate's very ability to function with order.

Calling another senator out for lying to everyone is a threat to the institution of the senate? If the Senate is really so flimsy an institution than it should just be abolished.

[Mr. Paulbotto]

You know who else abolished legislative chambers?

[RightNut]

um, Sulla?

[Winston]

Hitler?

[DenverJ]

BZZZZ! Foul!
Come on, Winston, you know the rules.

[Winston]

New Zealand?

[Ceci n'est pas un woodchipper]

Cromwell?

[Pathogen]

Emperor Palpatine?

[Mr. Paulbotto]

WINNER

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

Due to a rule change passed in the wake of Obama's "You Lie!" speech of 2009, it is actually against Senate rules to say someone is lying, call them a liar, etc. Surprisingly, it is not against the Senate rules to lie.

[Lord at War]

Which is really funny now that California is opening their PPACA exchange to illegal immigrants...

[Migrant Log Chipper]

Tamerlane or Atilla the Hun.

[Als? als? wik]

The biggest example of our dysfunctional legislature here comes not from the re-authorization of ExIm, but the fact that it happened as part of a highway funding bill.

[Migrant Log Chipper]

True dat, when these weasels are able to duck accountability we are fucked. Just the way politicians like it.

[Finchster]

Ted Cruz for Senate Majority Leader.

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

Ted Cruz is a counterproductive drama queen. His anti-Obamacare filibuster from 2013 wound up causing the GOP to have to capitulate on the debt ceiling fight, and cost Ken Cuccinelli the governorship of VA. I hope Gov. McAuliffe is still sending Cruz Christmas cards.

Fast forward two years, and he gives a correct but pointless speech on Ex-Im, which changed precisely zero minds and probably ended his ability to do anything in the Senate.

[Als? als? wik]

His anti-Obamacare filibuster was also prescient. He correctly understood that once a subsidy starts, no matter how bad the underlying law is, it's nearly impossible to repeal.

You see it as counterproductive, I see it as an incredibly rare stand on principle. Instead of the normal "we'll concede this one, and fight the next battle" mentality of republicans, which always results in failure theater, he actually threw down. The GOP capitulated because they're spineless - you really think that, absent Cruz, they otherwise wouldn't have capitulated?

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

His throwing down was doomed to failure as soon as he did it. They would have needed 13 Democrat senators and Obama to agree to defund Obamacare for it to work. That was never going to happen.

Without the Cruz histrionics they would have had a fighting chance at extracting some concessions in exchange for a debt ceiling increase, as they had done in 2011. Instead they had to give the administration carte blanche just to end the shutdown.

I lived in Northern VA at the time, and knew a shitload of contractors who were politically apathetic under normal circumstances, but were spitting mad at all Republicans everywhere in the wake of their lives being thrown into chaos by the shutdown. They mostly didn't even know where their polling place was before that year, but would have crawled over a mile of broken glass to vote against Cuccinelli. That's what Cruz' principled stand bought -- a result that prevented his principles from being implemented in the real world.

[Peaceboner]

Yeah, the Dems got their ass handed to them in the next election. I know the media was manic with concern trolling over the shutdown- saying everyone blamed Republicans, but in reality it seems to have given them a bump. It just isn't backed up with facts to say that Cruz hurt his cause.

[JeremyR]

The problem is that the Dems really didn't lose anything of substance (except bragging rights), because Republicans will cave to pretty much everything the Dems want.

[Tulpa (LAOL-OH)]

What a crock. The shutdown had zero effect on the 2014 congressional elections that happened 14 months later! The GOP surge then was due to numerous other factors, mainly the extremely difficult map the Dems faced in the Senate. Indeed one of the main drivers of GOP victory was the fiasco of Obamacare, which Cruz was in theory trying to prevent. Even had he succeeded, he would have deprived the GOP of a winning campaign issue!

Fact: the GOP had to utterly cave on the debt ceiling after the shutdown fiasco. When they had been able to extract concessions back in 2011 when Cruz wasn't attention-whoring.

[Pathogen]

And you assert that the GOP actually had (has) a spine, and wasn't longing for the first plausible opportunity to take a dive, and fold like a card table on the debt ceiling issue, as to look more centrist for the voting optics... You give them more credit than they are due.

[sarcasmic]

Look whose mom let him use the computer! How cute!

[lap83]

He seems to at least have some grasp of reality, as depressing as it is...

Comments from him on twitter:

The American people elected a Republican majority believing it would somehow be different from a Democratic majority.

Unfortunately the way the Senate currently operates, there is one party: The Washington party. #WashingtonCartel

[lap83]

He seems to at least have some grasp of reality, as depressing as it is...

Comments from him on twitter:

The American people elected a Republican majority believing it would somehow be different from a Democratic majority.

Unfortunately the way the Senate currently operates, there is one party: The Washington party. #WashingtonCartel

[Sevo]

"...Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) took to the floor to accuse anybody against the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of being servants of the Koch brothers...."

I'll bet he meant that as an insult, too.

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

.....aaaaand Kyle Busch wins the Brickyard Fie Hunnert. Evil haunts the land, as Toyota takes another race win....

#NASCAR

[Brett L]

Is Kyle the one who was dating the professional assassin?

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

*perks up*

This I do not know! I don't think so....he's dating a hottie. As do they all.

[DaveSs]

That was Kurt.

[Sevo]

"Fie Hunnert"
That's the Fo Hunnert! The Fie's in May.

[Hyperion]

Is it utterly impossible to get rid of any federal program, no matter how corrupt or cronyist or useless

Yes. But it's totally possible to expand it and give it it's own swat team, if that's of any consolation.

[Q-chips]

But National Helium Reserve Special Weapons And Tactics is a Steam Punk classic! Wait? it's real and not a comic book? Fuck.

[Win Bear]

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) took to the floor to accuse anybody against the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of being servants of the Koch brothers

Ah, dear Sen. Reid, even flattery won't get you out of this one.

[Harun]

McConnell has made too many mistakes.

#1: he needed to tit for tat Reid's rules.

#2: Reid should have had ZERO control over 2015 budget

#3: McConnell believes too much in "keeping issues for elections." You need to deliver something to your base. When you don't do this for many, many years, you get Trump.

[dbw1977]

This. This comment wins it all.

#3 is the exact point of where we are today. When you don't stand up for anything, and just become a part of an "elite" single party at the top, the base looks to someone to shake that up and give them something, anything, they've been hoping for.

Today, the guy promising that is Trump. Between his antics, and essentially taking zero money and saying he's beholden to no one but himself, he's becoming the Republican's other options.

Unless something happens, we're going to have a Trump v Sanders election. What a fucked up country...

[Rockabilly]

Harry Retard - the Koch Bro gives generous contributions to organizations trying to end Obama's racist war on drugs.

[phandaal]

Oh, Senate. Nobody gives a fuck that you feel like your royal personages were insulted.

Can we get term limits already??

[jakubixefu]

Google pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
This is wha- I do...... ?????? http://www.online-jobs9.com

[DlinaVicky]

crazy