This excerpt originally appeared in National Review Online on March 8, 2012.

The Ex-Im Bank is nothing more than corporate welfare. This is an agency that is in the business of subsidizing private companies with taxpayer dollars. It is unseemly and I will never understand why anyone would think that it is a role of the federal government to help private companies make money, pay their employees, get loans, or produce goods or services at home or abroad. If a company can’t stay in business on its own, that is probably because it is trying to sell stuff that consumers don’t want to buy. If that’s the case, why should consumers then have to buy the goods or the service indirectly through their taxes?