When a video surfaced last year showing MIT professor and health-care expert Jonathan Gruber admitting that Obamacare was written in a “tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes” so the law would get passed, it was a great insight into how bad laws get to see the light of day.

Well, this week, we came to understand a little more about how bad laws stick around even when lawmakers know they should be abolished. On Tuesday, South Carolina congressman Mark Sanford explained that he knew he should let the authorization for the Export-Import Bank expire, because it’s a government handout to big profitable companies, before saying . . . he’ll probably vote to reauthorize it anyway.

Via ExImExposed:

From The State:
[Rep. Mark] Sanford said [Rep. Mick] Mulvaney had been a “real hero” for opposing the Export Import Bank. Its clients include Boeing, which has a plant in North Charleston, not the “neediest of the needy,” Sanford said.
“(W)e’re dealing with large corporations that are well funded and have access to a variety of different insurance and capital sources, and if we can’t knock out a program like that, then how are we going to knock out anything in terms of limiting government?” Sanford asked.
But, he added, “On this one, I have to be wholly inconsistent because my philosophy would line up with Mick’s, but I think I have to vote with my district.”
The bank, Sanford added, is “deeply important to a company like Boeing.”

This is exactly why so many of us don’t trust Republicans when they claim to believe in free markets and small government. I hope Representative Sanford will reconsider his position and do what he knows is right.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it, you should check out ExImExposed, which has the latest news about the fight against the bank, which will heat up again this spring when it needs another reauthorization.