Jobs at 465 Houston-area companies at risk
Conservative campaign to end Export-Import Bank will hurt Texas jobs at worst possible moment
Manufacturing employees at 465 Houston-area businesses are in danger of losing their jobs because Texas conservatives in Congress want to make a major donor happy.
For over a year I’ve been writing about how U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, is determined to shut down the 80-year-old U.S. Export-Import Bank to please a political action committee called Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the Koch Brothers.
The hundreds of millions of dollars that the Koch Brothers spend on politics even convinced former Gov. Rick Perry to flip-flop on his support for the bank.
Last fall Hensarling was smart enough to suspend his campaign until after the November 2014 election and he scheduled the fight against the bank for this summer, when most people are not paying attention to politics. My colleague Kevin Diaz has an important story about what’s going on in Washington.
More important, though, is what’s happening in Houston and Texas. Texas is the leading exporting state in the U.S. and Houston is the top exporting city. Texas has added thousands of manufacturing jobs when other states have lost them. For more on this story, click
here.