A group of bipartisan senators is pushing to attach a multiyear reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import Bank to a stopgap spending measure.
Led by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the proposed short-term Ex-Im Bank extension is insufficient, arguing that uncertainty surrounding its reauthorization is already costing jobs.
{mosads}”We would like to see an alternative proposed with anywhere from two to five years, and that is what we are trying to work on, the reason is it is already costing us jobs now,” Cantwell said.
She said they want the extension tethered to the funding measure that would keep the federal government open past September.
Flanked by CEOS of both large and small energy companies on Wednesday, the four senators argued a nine-month extension wouldn’t cut it.
“Anybody who takes comfort in the fact that they are just going to vote for nine months and go home and tell their constituents that somehow they saved their jobs — you can look at these people and they’re not convinced,” Cantwell said, referring to the energy executives.
Marv Fertel, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, joined the senators on Wednesday, warning that failure to reauthorize the bank for longer than nine months would hurt the industry long term.
“We are building some nuclear plants here, but we are building many, many more overseas,” Fertel explained.
Kusum Kavia, CEO of a small company in California that exports custom-engineered solutions to clients in the energy and environment industries, credited the bank for its skyrocketing overseas business profits.
Last year, the bank supported $7.7 billion in U.S. exports aiding foreign energy development, production and transmission, Cantwell noted.
“That meant 46,000 U.S. energy jobs,” she said.
“We want to make sure that the bank, which is about to expire in 14 days, doesn’t turn out the lights on American energy jobs,” Cantwell added, flipping a common Republican refrain used to argue against climate regulations.
When asked what they would do if a multiyear extension failed to make it into the funding measure, Cantwell said she wasn’t sure if the Senate could get a longer reauthorization of the bank during the lame duck session of Congress.
She slammed House Republicans for just approving the nine month extension “to get them through the election so they can kill this later.”
A majority of Republicans in the House oppose the bank because they claim it encroaches on free-market principles.
Graham called such arguments an “ideological fixation on the way the world should be versus the way it is.”
“I’m a conservative but I will never let ideology get in the way of doing what’s best for the country,” Graham said, daring his colleagues who want to defund the bank to come to South Carolina to explain to workers at a GE turbine plant why they will lose their jobs.