The U.S. House of Representatives may vote soon to overturn the 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil.

That’s good news, because the economic benefits of lifting the ban – which a host of independent studies agree would soon follow – will be amplified the quicker Washington acts.

The Brookings Institution’s Charles Ebinger explained recently that “lifting the ban on crude oil exports will boost U.S. economic growth, and increase wages, employment, the balance of trade, and enhance overall economic welfare.”

But here’s the kicker, according to Ebinger: “The benefits are greatest if the United States lifts the ban in 2015 rather than delaying for all types of crude.”

That’s a reference to a Brookings study from last September explaining in some detail why action now is so important, and why delaying exports or only allowing condensate exports can substantially lower the economic benefits that would flow from removing the ban entirely.

Those benefits are not insubstantial.

Among them are greater domestic production of oil and natural gas – something that would create jobs and lift the economy.

And virtually everyone agrees it would put downward pressure on gasoline prices. This infographic from the Bipartisan Policy Center helps show why.

Speaking of bipartisanship, one of the most encouraging things I have seen in this debate over ending the ban on crude oil exports is the support coming from both Democrats and Republicans.

This bipartisanship was on display this weekend on the op-ed pages of two Texas newspapers. A pair of prominent Republican elected officials – U.S. Rep. Mike McCaul and Texas Railroad Commission member Christi Craddick – took to the pages of the Houston Chronicle to call for putting “American jobs and American security first” by ending the ban on exports.

Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar wrote in the San Antonio Express-News that the ban “hampers the oil industry’s ability to bring jobs back to our still-recovering national economy.”

The congressman noted that the consultancy IHS projects hundreds of thousands of jobs would be produced broadly throughout the U.S. economy every year for the next decade-and-a-half if the ban were lifted.

The bipartisan chorus in favor of exports is growing.

Let’s hope Congress and the White House act quickly to bring America’s export policy out of the 1970s and make a pro-exports strategy a cornerstone of sound economic and energy-security policy for the 21st century.