Politico has the following one-year-anniversary reminder:

The Export-Import Bank celebrated the anniversary this weekend of the return of its charter, marking one year since President Barack Obama signed it back into business on Dec. 4, 2015. But the bank has remained hobbled ever since, unable to approve high-dollar deals because of its lack of a quorum — and proponents continue to push congressional lawmakers as they hammer out a stopgap funding bill this week to include language that would bring the bank back to full capacity.

That’s right — and this is a good reason to celebrate the crippling of one of the most crony of all government programs. For us freedom fighters, the victory is even more important if you add the other six months where the Ex-Im Bank was not allowed to operate at all because its charter had not been reauthorized. For many months now, Ex-Im hasn’t been able to use taxpayer dollars to guarantee loans above $10 million that ultimately benefit giant manufacturers like Boeing and GE. And yet, the world is still turning, exporters are still exporting, Boeing is still selling planes to domestic and foreign companies, foreign companies are still buying goods from American companies including GE and Boeing, and the demise of the Ex-Im Bank hasn’t slowed down the economy any further than when the bank was fully operational.

Not surprisingly, a world without Ex-Im is nothing like what we were told it would be. That’s mostly because what Ex-Im reall mission isn’t to prop up exports and jobs — but to prop up profits at manufacturing giants. The sky isn’t falling and, in fact, the U.S. is a fairer place, less rigged toward big, politically connected companies at the expenses of ordinary Americans.

You would think that Democrats would be thrilled now that Ex-Im is, indeed, just about small businesses. But with the exception of Senator Bernie Sanders, most Democrats are not pleased at all. Unfortunately, many Republicans — who fail to understand the difference between being pro-market and pro-business — aren’t pleased either and they seem committed to grant President Obama’s Christmas wish that the Ex-Im Bank’s full lending authority be restored.

Hill lawmakers negotiating a plan for a continuing resolution have already said the measure will include an unusually high number of so-called “anomalies” — funding or policy provisions to allow some new programs to launch or to maintain existing ones. Congress faces a deadline of Friday, Dec. 9 to avoid a government shutdown, so the spending debate will dominate the week’s agenda — and keep lawmakers from heading home for the holidays until a deal is reached. Bank supporters, including the White House, view the CR as the best and potentially last chance to alter the quorum rules so that the bank can again approve deals worth more than $10 million.

This would be a big mistake — as Andy Koenig of Freedom Partners sums up nicely:

Washington lobbyists will stop at nothing to turn a year-end spending bill into a Christmas tree for lame duck lawmakers and corporate special interests. Fiscal conservatives should reject these last-minute efforts by the Obama administration to resurrect corporate welfare at the Ex-Im Bank before leaving town. The Ex-Im Bank was an open bar for special interests — President Obama wants to keep it open, Congress should close it out.

Freedom Partners previously joined in an campaign by nearly 40 free-market groups calling on Senate majority leader McConnell and House speaker Ryan to oppose efforts to ease the quorum requirement for the Ex-Im Bank in any forthcoming spending legislation. In August, Freedom Partners chairman Mark Holden sent a letter to Speaker Ryan urging Congress to reject all efforts to alter Export-Import Bank quorum rules.

In addition, the legality of the move is questionable at best. First, lawmakers aren’t allowed to change the law in a CR. That means that they can’t change the quorum requirement through the CR, period. Second, using the anomaly process isn’t the way to go either. Anomalies are meant to address funding-level issues alone. So changing the quorum requirement, regardless of what the Obama administration claims, doesn’t qualify either. In fact, if you look at the entire, long list of “anomalies,” the Ex-Im item is the only one that truly stands out. Most other big items are additional defense spending for the continuation of existing programs — but the defense anomalies will disappear if the Congress passes the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and funds it. In other words, the Ex-Im anomaly is a policy change disguised in anomaly clothing. Lawmakers shouldn’t be fooled by this ploy no matter how much they want to indulge in their crony tendencies.

Last September, Congress gave us a clean CR that didn’t cave to special-interest arm twisting and resisted efforts to increase spending and award corporate welfare. We should expect no less this time around.