The Washington Post editorial board on Thursday criticized the U.S. Export Import Bank’s claims regarding the number of jobs "supported" by the subsidies it provides.
The bank, which finances the purchases of U.S. exports by foreign governments and corporations, uses nebulous metrics for U.S. employment that it supposedly supports, the Post noted, despite scrutiny from federal watchdogs.
On average, Ex-Im calculates, a billion dollars of Ex-Im-backed exports supports 6,390 U.S. jobs; ergo, the $379.3 million exported by firms in Mr. Delaney’s district supported 2,423. GAO pointed out, additionally, that these figures do not differentiate between full-time and part-time work and, crucially, provide no information about what might have happened to employment at the firms in question, or others, if the resources marshalled by Ex-Im had flowed elsewhere in the economy.
GAO found nothing fraudulent about any of this, nor do we. The watchdog agency simply noted the rather crucial assumptions and limitations embedded in Ex-Im’s methodology and urged the bank to be more transparent about them — because "Congressional and public stakeholders may not fully understand what the jobs number that Ex-Im reports represents and the extent to which Ex-Im’s financing may have affected U.S. employment." Ex-Im promised to lay bare its methodology on its Web site and annual report; the four paragraphs you’ll find there do indeed provide a bare-bones summary of the methodology, but not its limitations.