A single senator stymies the Export-Import Bank

Thursday is an ignominious anniversary for the government agency that helps finance foreigners’ purchases of U.S. exports. Thanks to a single senator, it has been a full year since the 82-year-old ExportImport Bank could approve deals exceeding $10 million, a limit that rules out high-dollar deals on airplanes, power generators, heavy equipment and nuclear reactors.

More than 30 transactions worth more than $20 billion to U.S. busi- nesses are stuck awaiting assistance for their buyers, in the so far vain hope that Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., once a bank supporter, will end his power play and allow the agency to fully function.

In turn, giants like General Electric and Boeing are shifting more operations and jobs abroad. Other nations’ export-credit agencies are “rolling out the red carpet,” said John G. Rice, the GE vice chairman.

Last June 30, the Ex-Im Bank, two blocks from the White House, closed its door to all new business after a faction of conservative Republicans, denouncing “corporate welfare,” blocked renewal of its charter.

In December, the bank’s bipartisan supporters in Congress secured the agency’s reopening, only to watch Shelby play what has proved to be a very strong hand. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he bottled up President Barack Obama’s nomination of a third member for the bank’s five-person board. Only the board can approve transactions of more than $10 million; without a quorum of three it cannot.

The resulting seven-month impasse reflects both the long-standing power of a single senator to block action in that institution, and the more recent ascendance in the Republican Party of conservative populists — hostile to all things big, business and government — over once-dominant pro-business types.