UGH: Senate Republicans Use New Rules to Save a Crony Institution.

After nuking their debate rules for nominations last month for the stated reason that they wanted to push the confirmations of more Republican judges, the Senate this week used the rule change instead to waste precious floor time expanding corporate cronyism.

The Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank for more than 1,000 days has lacked the full quorum of its board of directors, which is necessary to approve taxpayer-funded loans of over $10 million to benefit America’s richest corporations (think Boeing, Caterpillar, and General Electric). The board now has a full slate, and can confirm loans up to $100 million.

The Ex-Im bank, you may recall, loomed large on the Tea Party agenda in 2014 and 2015. It stood as a symbol of everything establishment Washington had gotten wrong: K Street colluding, corporate favoritism, and the general feeling of, “Wait, I’m sorry, my tax dollars do what?”

Washington is where bad ideas go to achieve immortality.