Top House Democrats said Tuesday they’ll be able to deliver votes needed to reauthorize the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, despite progressives’ concerns about weakening anti-coal rules at the bank.
The bank’s charter is set to expire one minute after midnight Tuesday, presenting a temporary political victory for Tea Party conservatives who have argued the bank amounts to corporate welfare by using taxpayer funds to finance big business projects.
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on a conference call with reporters Tuesday that he expects lawmakers to reauthorize the bank in July.
But both of the most prominent proposals in the Senate and in the House would weaken the Obama administration’s restrictions preventing the Ex-Im from financing many projects that utilize coal power plants.
“That’s an issue we’ll have to discuss and proceed on, but we think we can overcome issues that would kill the [bank’s reauthorization] and get it reauthorized while being sensitive to the environment,” Hoyer said.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, signaled support on the conference call for Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) efforts to relax the environmental standards.
“I don’t think that will be an obstacle to reauthorization,” Waters said. “Kirk-Heitkamp deals with that issue in a reasonable way.”
Environmentalists have raised concerns about weakening the standards. A reversal on the regulations would represent a major policy victory for the coal industry, which has championed reversing the standards.
In December 2013, the bank stopped funding coal projects overseas, though officials left room for certain exceptions for impoverished nations.