While legislators in Washington, D.C., tangle over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, several area businesses are using the bank’s programs to expand and flourish.

Sister companies Dry Corp and DryCase have turned to the Export-Import Bank for loan guarantees and for insurance against loss when a foreign deal went bad. In fact, their use of the Export-Import Bank is such an illustration of the bank’s mission at work, their experience and testimony was featured in a July 7 article in The New York Times about the bank, a creation of the first Franklin Roosevelt administration whose charter will expire in September unless Congress acts to renew it.

The Export-Import Bank’s programs lessen the risk involved in shipping abroad, and both Dry Corp and DryCase have used them for the past three years or so, the sister companies’ COO Corey Heim said in a telephone interview.

In early 2013, an Australian company bought about $10,000 worth of the companies’ merchandise. Soon after, the Wilmington enterprise learned the Australian customer had gone out of business, and there was apparently no way of getting payment for its goods.

Because Dry Corp/DryCase had purchased export insurance, Heim said, the companies got about 95 percent of their money back.

Heim and his employer aren’t the only area fans of the program that has been credited for helping businesses overcome financial obstacles to foreign sales.

The beneficiaries have been big businesses – Boeing and GE Hitachi are customers – as well as small businesses like Dry Corp/DryCase, which together employ 21 and sell about $1 million of their waterproof protective products annually.

There has been heated debate, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives, about the bank’s true value as its expiration deadline nears, with some legislators labeling the bank’s loan guarantees and insurance program as examples of corporate welfare.

Heim and his employer, understandably, are big fans of the bank. The sister companies have used the loan program as a way to extend credit terms to their foreign customers, so Dry Corp and DryCase don’t have to demand up-front payment, which new customers are often unwilling to risk when they don’t know if their new supplier will come through with the goods.

James Wind, CFO of Flow Sciences in Leland, said the company has worked with the Export-Import Bank for receivables insurance.

“That means we are able to offer payment terms so our [international] customers don’t have to pay up-front. That does a lot to increase trust and repeat sales,” he said.

Wind said that having the guarantee is a “belt-and-suspenders type of thing that allows us to work with domestic banks” in much the same way as having an SBA loan guarantee makes a bank more willing to lend to a small business.

The Export-Import Bank also is an important ally for GE Hitachi, helping it remain competitive globally, said Christopher White, spokesman for the New Hanover County facility.

“Most of our international competitors have access to low-cost financing and insurance though the Export Credit Agencies – or ECAs – of their home countries,” he said. “In order to level the playing field, the U.S. Government offers its own export financing through Ex-Im. Ex-Im is a big equalizer for us as we face the competition.”

Some in Congress – and some conservative organizations – don’t see it that way, and are fighting hard to kill the bank.

“The reality is that roughly 1 percent of all exports receive ‘support’ to ‘level the playing field,’” wrote Heritage Action for America’s educational coordinator Zack Slingsby in an opinion piece on the organization’s website. “U.S. exports hit a record total of $2.2 trillion last year – 98 percent of which did not receive help from the Ex-Im. Less than half the Bank’s transactions in 2013 were designated as countering foreign subsidies.”

In a related piece on the website, Slingsby states that the bank’s decisions as to what businesses get support smacks of cronyism, and says it allows the federal government to tread in territory best left to the free market.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) is a supporter of the Export-Import Bank, as is Richard Burr (R-NC). Hagan's office reported that, between 2007 and 2014 in North Carolina alone, the bank’s programs have supported $3 billion in exports and 187 exporting businesses, 137 of which are small businesses.

Hagan is running for re-election this fall. Her Republican opponent, Thom Tillis, has come out against re-authorization of the bank.

"If the Export-Import Bank was reformed to provide a level playing field so that small businesses could access its capital competitively, then it would be worth reauthorizing,” Tillis was quoted as saying in a McClatchy News Service story last week. “The bank needs to stop playing favorites by giving huge handouts to big, billion-dollar corporations.”

State Rep. Rick Catlin (R-New Hanover) is involved in several initiatives to help more North Carolina businesses export their goods and services. He, like Hagan, Burr and others of both parties, contends that by removing some barriers to foreign trade, the bank helps create jobs and contribute to economic development.

“The Ex-Im Bank is one of the resources we want to educate people on,” said Catlin, who is chairman of the county’s Foreign Trade Promotion Council. “It’s a resource, along with Foreign Trade Zones, that businesses should look at and consider when doing international trade. We’re going to be talking about it at our next Foreign Trade Promotion Conference in October.”

The bank is a “valuable tool to small businesses like ours,” said Russ LaBelle, president of Wilmington Machinery, explaining that Export-Import Bank’s credit insurance program enables his company to extend credit to new customers all over the world without undue risk.

And without exports, LaBelle said, “We probably would be a dying business.”

“I definitely support continuing the Ex-Im Bank,” he said. “I went to a symposium that Sen. Hagan held [on the bank] and listened to the testimony of other businesses such as ours, and I can tell you, the bank has made a world of difference.”