In the past week, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) and House majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) have shown great resolve in passing an extension to the highway bill clean of all Ex-Im Bank extensions.

Chairman Ryan, for instance, warned the Senate not to mess with the House’s $8 billion transportation funding patch. The Hill reported last week:

The House voted Wednesday to approve a short-term deal, which lasts until December, in part to preempt the Senate from attaching Ex-Im.
Ryan said after the temporary patch was approved on a 312-119 vote in the House that the Senate should follow suit and send the lower chamber back a clean highway funding extension.
“The House has now taken the first step to providing the stability and predictability that our highway program needs,” he said in a statement.
“This plan gives us our best opportunity to produce and pass a long-term bill to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, and other infrastructure this year,” Ryan continued. “This is the right approach, and the Senate should move quickly to adopt this extension — without any unrelated measures — so that we can provide some certainty and get to work on a multi-year plan.”

McCarthy too has warned the Senate. From a vigorous but respectful exchange with Representative Hoyer:

McCarthy said Thursday that the Senate should focus on keeping federal highway dollars flowing past the end of this month.
“I am one who has always believed in the principle that you should just deal with the subject that’s before you,” he said during a debate on the House floor.
“We have passed the highway bill,” McCarthy continued. “The best advice I can give to the Senate . . . [is] to pass a clean highway bill and move it to the president.”

This is an important sign of real commitment from these members to ridding us of one of the many cronyist programs in Washington.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Senator Cruz is going all out against the Ex-Im Bank and is fully committed to bury this agency once and for all. Last Wednesday, during a joint press conference featuring representatives Bill Flores and Jim Jordan, Senator Mike Lee, and other conservatives like Ken Cuccinelli, he called for the keeping the bank liquidated and asked Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to permanently kill the agency by simply blocking floor votes on any measure to give Ex-Im a new lease on life.

Senator Richard Shelby, the head of the Banking Committee, has also called for the end of Ex-Im along with many other Republican senators, including Marco Rubio. They all seem to be gearing up for a real fight in July. Needless to say, the next two weeks should be interesting.