VERGINIA: Congress left Washington without renewing the federal charter of the Export Import Bank of the United States, as it has done for 70 years. For decades, conservatives have dreamed of paring the federal government by eliminating entire cabinet departments or at least an agency or two. Now they have finally done it.
So at midnight the bank will lose its authority to extend new taxpayer backed loans to foreign purchasers of U.S. goods sold abroad, buoying conservatives who have mounted a year’s long campaign to eliminate an institution they say represents the worst of big government.
