It’s not every day a congressman has the chance to advocate for a simple policy measure directly connected to something important to any congressman: the preservation of jobs in his district. But U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin had that chance, and he blew it.
On Tuesday night, the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of renewing the expired charter of the Export-Import Bank, the country’s official export credit agency, until 2019. Poliquin joined a majority of his fellow House Republicans and all but one Democrat in voting for the charter’s renewal.
But the path Poliquin took to that final “yes” vote is a puzzling one that highlights a dangerous balancing act between his commitment to a conservative Republican agenda and the needs of his own district. At stake at home is the pending loss of 80 jobs at the General Electric Co. plant in Bangor, which manufactures gas and steam turbine components. GE announced plans last month to transfer those jobs to France, specifically because of its inability to secure Ex-Im financing as a result of the bank’s lapsed charter. GE instead lined up comparable financing from the French government-backed COFACE credit agency.
The Export-Import Bank has emerged in recent years as a prime target for conservative Republicans in Congress backed by groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Action and the Club for Growth. The bank’s staunchest opponents — including Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee on which Poliquin serves and who has contributed $5,000 through his PAC to Poliquin’s re-election campaign — have disparaged the organization as a “culturally corrupt” outpost for “corporate welfare” and the “face of cronyism.”
In early June, just weeks before the bank’s June 30 lapse in authority, Poliquin had strong criticism for its president and chairman, Fred Hochberg, at a Financial Services Committee hearing.
“I’d like to find out how I can go back to the people that I represent with this trail of mismanagement, ongoing mismanagement, and vote to reauthorize your bank,” Poliquin said.
In a follow-up column for The Maine Wire, Poliquin wrote about a “never-ending list of fraud and corruption charges that surround the Export-Import Bank.” He later repeated Hensarling’s “corporate welfare” charge against the bank.
Despite the strong rhetoric, when GE announced its job relocation plans in mid-September, Poliquin insisted he had never opposed reauthorization of the bank’s charter and didn’t indicate which way he would ultimately vote. Poliquin later sat out, then voted against a bipartisan petition to force Tuesday’s ultimate reauthorization vote.
Throughout the debate over Ex-Im, Poliquin has spoken of the need for reforms at the bank, citing fraud convictions, ongoing fraud investigations and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines collected related to the bank’s activity. What he fails to note, however, is that those investigations and convictions are the result of an important reform that happened eight years ago — the addition of an independent inspector general’s office within the bank — that is paying off in the way of a more honestly, more efficiently functioning operation. Poliquin also criticizes the bank as a government purveyor of credit taking business that should belong in the private sector. But government-backed credit is a required component of many export deals, meaning the lack of Ex-Im simply puts U.S. exporters, including a number of small businesses in Maine, at a disadvantage compared with their counterparts in 60 nations that operate their own export credit agencies.
Even if the Senate votes swiftly to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank, GE won’t abandon its job relocation plans. The bank’s charter would be up for renewal in 2019, when bank opponents could again threaten to kill Ex-Im, GE’s vice chairman told The New York Times.
Poliquin ultimately voted the right way, but he was a willing participant in Republican efforts to undermine the Ex-Im Bank’s credibility and make its normally apolitical reauthorization a political spectacle. Such efforts have put the bank’s future — and by extension, its ability to help U.S. exporters of all sizes — in doubt.
