INTERVIEW — SENATOR JIM DEMINT – former South Carolina senator and current president of The Heritage Foundation

• The Export-Import Bank Needs to Stay Dead. (By Jim DeMint) –The Export-Import Bank is dead. Let’s keep it that way. This hoary relic of the Great Depression has been plagued with corruption and fraud. Its lending practices primarily benefit a handful of wealthy American mega-corporations and, far too often, unsavory interests abroad. Ex-Im’s charter expired on June 30, but special interests continue to press Congress to revive it. Lawmakers wishing to keep this monument to crony capitalism dead and buried can draw some valuable “how-to” lessons from past successful effortsto resist wasteful special-interest pleadings. In 1988, Congress established the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission to close unnecessary and expensive military bases. For years, successive administrations had treated basing decisions as political bonbons, keeping certain bases open for their friends while closing others.