Sen. Patty Murray: Loss of Export-Import Bank could be bad for Boeing

Congress is still, of course, negotiating over budgets and trying to decide which programs work and which programs don’t. Right in the middle of it is Senator Patty Murray.

At issue is the Tuesday night deadline to reauthorize authority to the Export-Import Bank, which helps American companies like Boeing sell their products overseas.

Murray told KIRO Radio the Republicans in the House have “absolutely refused to extend the Ex-Im Bank authority.”

“That is going to put in jeopardy a lot of workers in our state and businesses in our state because they won’t be able to have the backing to be able to sell their products.

“I am very frustrated with the extreme Republicans in the House refusing to allow us to extend this. I’ve been talking to many Republicans in the Senate, as well as the House, to see what we can do to move this forward and perhaps get it re-authorized in July.”

Murray said that if they can’t get an extension, Boeing could have trouble selling airplanes in the more “challenging countries” around the world.

“There are many small countries and larger countries that don’t have the ability – when we try to sell – so the Ex-Im Bank is the backer of this and the assurance that the loan is good. It’s a very important tool for us in exporting. Many other countries have a very similar and much larger program than that. So we will be at a huge disadvantage, globally, in terms of being able to compete with our products.”

We’ve been debating the Export-Import Bank for years &#8212 ever since I’ve been here. Supposedly it’s essential for Boeing and I guess we’re going to find out because, as of midnight, it’s going to disappear.

If planes begin piling up in Everett, than we’ll know it made a difference.

Meanwhile, Murray is also working with Rep. Paul Ryan and the two appear to have become best buddies.

“He was chair of the budget committee at the time, so I had the opportunity to get to know him a little bit better. When I became budget chair several years ago, he and I worked together on many things and as we all know about a very large budget agreement that got our country and Congress out of a very bad deadlock back in 2013. Yes, I’ve been working with him for a very long time.”

Murray’s latest initiative, the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2015, will appropriate money based on what works. But were we not doing this before?

“It does beg that question,” Murray said. “I think what both of us, as chairs of the budget committee, realized is that Congress spends a lot of money. There’s a lot of information out there in a lot of different places about what works and what doesn’t work, but not really good evidence-based that we can all rely on together to make decisions about how we spend money. We think this is a really important time for us to institute this and get it moving.”

Murray explained that the goal is to create an index for lawmakers. They’ll establish a 15-member commission to study how to expand the use of data to evaluate the effectiveness of federal programs and tax expenditures. The committee will then bring the information back to Congress.