Disengenuous

Here is another example of how President Obama says one thing and does another. Timothy P. Carney points out that while Obama was saying in his debates with Romney, "“Why wouldn't we eliminate tax breaks for corporate jets? My attitude is if you got a corporate jet, you can probably afford to pay full freight, not get a special break for it.” Nevertheless, Carney reveals that

The Export-Import Bank of the United States recently announced a milestone: Under Obama, the agency has subsidized the sale of $1 billion in private jet sales to overseas customers.

Obama pretends to oppose corporate jet subsidies. During the 2011 debt-ceiling fight, for example, Obama harped on “tax breaks for corporate jet owners,” mentioning it six times in a June 29 press conference.

Two months after Obama's 2011 press conference about tax breaks for corporate jets, the Ex-Im board approved a $75.8 million loan to help a Chinese company called ICBC Financial Leasing buy “business aircraft” from U.S. manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft.

ICBC is a subsidiary of the state-owned Industrial Commercial Bank of China. HawkerBeechcraft was at the time largely owned by Goldman Sachs.

So, amid contentious budget debates and calls for tax hikes and spending cuts, Ex-Im loaned $75.8 million in taxpayer money, at 1.68 percent, to the Chinese government so that it could buy private jets from Goldman Sachs. Why should taxpayers have to bear the risk and float such a loan?

This fall, the Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization. Obama will lobby to keep the agency open, and thus the private jet subsidies coming. Then he'll return to his disingenuous attacks on corporate jets.

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