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Fourth of July or Christmas in July? Policy Riders are Big Gift to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

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Just before Congress escaped town for the Fourth of July recess, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee released its draft fiscal year 2018 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) Appropriations bill. The FSGG appropriations bill provides annual funding for the U.S. Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and many other important agencies.

This year, however, the bill is packed chock full of ideological policy riders that have nothing to with funding the agencies the bill is supposed to provide for, and everything to do with pleasing the House majority’s corporate masters at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. By tucking these policy riders into must-pass legislation, the House leadership ensures that they have a better chance of becoming law than they would if they were forced to stand on their own (highly dubious) merits.

It may be the Fourth of July holiday week, but the release of the draft FSGG appropriations bill is likely to have been celebrated like Christmas in July in the marble hallways of the Chamber. The draft bill provides the Chamber with a veritable avalanche of presents, probably in response to the avalanche of money the Chamber has bestowed upon GOP candidates for Congress.

The biggest gift of all to the Chamber is the provision of the draft bill that would prevent the SEC from developing a rule that would require publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending to investors, including donations to politically active trade associations like the Chamber. The secrecy-obsessed Chamber has long lobbiedagainst such a rule. It has even reached out to member companies to urge them against voluntarily disclosing such information despite the fact that more than 1.2 million investors (retail and institutional) and members of the public have called for it.

If the policy rider prohibiting the development of a political spending disclosure rule qualifies as the proverbial new car in the garage on Christmas morning, then the rider eliminating the financial independence of the CFPB qualifies as the proverbial first class tickets to Paris for the Chamber and its friends on Wall Street. Fighting the existence of a strong, independent CFPB has been a lodestar for the Chamber. Why does the Chamber hate the CFPB so much? Probably because the CFBP is doing its job, working to protect consumers from unscrupulous and sometimes illegal behavior by the big financial institutions whose interests the Chamber represents. Indeed, the CFPB has obtained $11.8 billion in relief for over 29 million consumers. That’s $11.8 billion that wasn’t available for executive bonuses and stock buy-backs.

Unfortunately, bringing the CFPB under the heal of the very politicians who are most dependent upon corporate cash for their reelections isn’t the only policy rider in the draft FSGG appropriations bill that’s a giveaway to the Chamber’s Wall Street patrons. The draft bill contains a separate rider that would repeal the Volcker Rule. The Volcker Rule prevents banks from engaging in speculative trading with depositors’ money, thereby reducing the chances of another financial crisis. Of course, the Chamber and the Big Banks don’t like the Volcker Rule because it limits Wall Street’s ability to make short term profits that in turn produce big bonuses for executives.

As if all this weren’t enough, the draft FSGG appropriations bill contains another yuge gift for the Chamber and its financial services industry backers. The draft bill contains a rider which would halt a CFPB rule restricting the use of forced arbitration clauses buried in the fine print of consumer financial contracts. The Chamber has long campaigned against limits on this “rip-off” clause. Blocking this rule would essentially allow corporations to rip off consumers with impunity, as the Wells Fargo fake account scandal litigation has shown.

While it is undoubtedly depressing that our elected officials, who are supposed to represent the people, are instead finding new and ever more creative opportunities to shower gifts on their corporate benefactors, we still have time to make our voices heard. The House FSGG appropriations bill hasn’t yet passed through the full appropriations committee. So call your congressperson and tell him or her that you object to all of these harmful policy riders whose only purpose is to please the Chamber and the giant corporations intent upon buying our democracy.

Because if we don’t stand up and make our voices heard, then they very well may wind up singing some rather special Christmas carols at the Chamber this summer.

If you’d like to learn more about the Chamber and its reactionary agenda, you can always visit us on www.chamberofcommercewatch.org or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce Spent Over $16 Million Supporting Authors of Senate Healthcare Bill

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ince the beginning of the debate around passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has worked to undermine efforts to expand access to healthcare for tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans.

In just 15 months between 2009 and 2010, the Chamber spent more than $102 million dollars, funneled to it by the big health insurers, on opposing the ACA. Fast forward to 2017, and we see that the Chamber has far from given up its crusade against the ACA, and recently urged the House to pass the American Health Care Act (AHCA) which would repeal the ACA. If the ACA were repealed, it would likely result in 23 million Americans losing their health insurance and would weaken a host of important protections such as the requirement that health insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions.

Now, with 13 Republican senators crafting a Senate version of the AHCA in secret, we wanted to see to what level the Chamber has the ear of these powerful senators. It should perhaps come as no surprise that the Chamber, the largest non-disclosing outside spender in 2016 congressional races, spent more than $16 million between 2012 and 2016 supporting the campaigns of ten of the 13 senators authoring the bill.

MONEY SPENT BY U.S. CHAMBER TO SUPPORT SENATE HEALTH CARE BILL AUTHORS
SENATOR MONEY SPENT BY CHAMBER, 2012-2016
LAMAR ALEXANDER (R-TN) $1,000
MIKE LEE (R-UT) $1,000
JOHN THUNE (R-SD) $3,500
TOM COTTON (R-AR) $5,000
JOHN CORNYN (R-TX) $7,500
ORRIN HATCH (R-UT) $95, 140
MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) $1, 579, 620
CORY GARDNER (R-CO) $3, 734, 275
ROB PORTMAN (R-OH) $4, 616, 326
PAT TOOMEY (R-PA) $6, 116, 150
TOTAL $16, 159, 511

(Senate authors of the secret healthcare bill that were not supported by the Chamber are Cruz, Enzi, and Barrasso)

With powerful special interests groups like the Chamber spending eye-popping sums of money to elect some of these senators, is it any wonder that reports about the secret senate Republican plans for health care reform show that like the House version, it will prioritize the interests of the big health insurers over those of the American people? The Chamber’s longstanding opposition to the ACA and its support of the AHCA are just another example of the trade group putting profits before people.

Chamber Watch is a project of Public Citizen. If you’d like to learn more about the Chamber, you can always visit us on www.chamberofcommercewatch.org or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

#DropTheChamber

Do Disney, Gap, and Pepsi Know that Their Money is Being Used to Fund the Trump Agenda?

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How would you react if we told you that popular brands such as Disney, Pepsi, and Gap were funding the Trump agenda? That your hard-earned money was going to support Steve Bannon’s dreamed of “deconstruction of the administrative state” which would wipe away a whole host of public protections?

Surprised? Upset? Angry?

Sorry, but it’s true. You see, it turns out that Disney, Pepsi, and Gap all fund Washington’s most powerful lobbying group, a group that is the driving force behind much of the Trump/GOP agenda.

Which group is that? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber, backed by nearly $275 million in corporate money, is Washington’s proverbial 800 pound gorilla. On issues as diverse as climate, clean air, clean water, fossil fuel production and pipelines, worker safety, financial regulation, net neutrality, healthcare, overtime pay, and deregulation in general, Trump and the GOP are ripping entire pages from the Chamber’s playbook.

Here at Public Citizen’s Chamber Watch project, we wanted to know which companies were funding the Chamber/Trump agenda, and we were particularly interested to know if companies that have made public commitments on climate, sustainability, clean water, and public health were funding the Chamber despite its long history of anti-climate, anti-environmental, pro-tobacco advocacy.

Based on our review of publicly-available information as well as conversations with company officials, we learned that many companies that have – at least on paper – good policies on climate, sustainability, and/or public health are still funding the Chamber.

And Disney, Pepsi, and Gap are among these companies.

Today, a diverse coalition of more than 50 groups in more than a dozen countries asks Disney, Gap, and Pepsi to stop funding a trade association that works against the environmental and public health policies these corporations claim to support. After all, how can we take these companies’ commitments on climate and public health seriously when they financially support an organization that is one of the lead plaintiffs against the Clean Power Plan, constantly lobbies for the fossil fuel industry, and lobbies in dozens of countries against anti-smoking laws and regulations?

Already, companies such as Apple and Pacific Gas & Electric have left the Chamber due to the Chamber’s anti-climate advocacy, and CVS left as a result of the Chamber’s pro-tobacco work. It is time for Disney, Pepsi, and Gap to do the same. To continue to fund the Chamber would be to render meaningless the positive steps these companies have taken on climate and/or tobacco.

What’s more, continued support of the Chamber poses a significant reputational risk to these companies, one that should concern their shareholders. Not only does membership in the Chamber render them complicit in the Chamber’s anti-climate and pro-tobacco advocacy, it also associates them with an explicitly partisan group.

In 2016, the Chamber formed an alliance with leading Republican luminaries to “Save the Senate” for the GOP. The Chamber ultimately wound up spending almost $30 million in dark money on congressional races, more than any other group that doesn’t disclose its donors. All of this money benefited Republican candidates.

Like all companies, Disney, Pepsi, and Gap have ideologically diverse customer bases, and presumably many of their customers would be angry to learn that companies they patronize are supporting such a partisan group. In an era when more and more consumers are linking their purchasing decisions to a company’s political activities, it is especially risky for brands like Disney, Pepsi, and Gap to associate themselves with a hyper-partisan group such as the Chamber that is one of the architects of the Trump agenda.

The Chamber’s agenda is bad for both public health and the health of the planet and its secret money partisan political spending is bad for the health of a transparent democracy. The time has come for Disney, Pepsi, and Gap to drop the Chamber.

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Behind the Headlines: Trump/GOP Regulatory Rollbacks Reveal Corporate Influence

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If you’re a progressive, you might feel tempted to pop the champagne corks after the spectacular collapse of the GOP’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) last week making it seem as if President Trump and Republican Congress may not be ready for prime time governing.

With all of these stories dominating the news cycle, some might think that Trump administration and GOP Congress are simply not ready to govern. Hobbled by incompetence and internal squabbling, they seem to lurch from one fiasco to the next.

However, the daily headlines of scandals mask one area where Trump and the GOP Congress have been successful at advancing the Republican agenda: they have already succeeded in pursuing the most aggressive regulatory rollback since the Reagan administration.

The main driver of this deregulatory agenda is the big business behemoth that is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Sure, it may have been Steve Bannon who uttered the words, “deconstruct the administrative state,” but it is the Chamber along with its big business allies who behind this drive to gut critical public protections.

So forgive us for being Debbie Downers and for corking the champagne as we take a moment to bring you up to speed on what the GOP, Chamber, and Trump have succeeded in doing during the first two months of this administration.

The past two months have been marked by an aggressive use of the heretofore rarely used Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to strike down regulatory protections issued in the final months of a previous administration using expedited procedures. Hundreds of public protections are at risk through the CRA, 15 have been repealed by the House, 12 in the Senate, and already 7 have been signed by Trump.

In February, Trump signed three CRA resolutions, reversing Obama regulations banning Social Security recipients with a mental impairment from buying firearms, protecting streams from water pollution by coal mines, and requiring oil, gas, and mining companies to publish payments they make to foreign governments.  The Chamber was a big booster of both of these giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

Just this week, Trump signed four more CRA resolutions. Among them was the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” rule, which barred companies from receiving federal contracts if they had a history of violating wage, labor or workplace safety laws. The U.S. Chamber has been lobbying against this rule since its creation, in an effort to protect big federal contractors from being finally held accountable. Another of these was a Bureau of Land Management rule known as “Planning 2.0,” which gave the federal government a greater role in land use decisions. This rule was opposed by the energy industry, and therefore the Chamber strongly lobbied for its demise.

Unfortunately, the CRA isn’t the only tool in the Trump Administration’s toolbox. Trump has also issued several executive orders (EOs) undoing our public protections. He issued an EO mandating that two regulations are to be repealed for every new one that goes on the books. This week, he signed an EO aimed at undoing numerous climate initiatives put in place by the Obama administration. The EO includes telling the EPA and other agencies to rollback components of the Clean Power Plan, reconsider carbon standards for new coal plants, reassess methane emission regulations, as well as several other changes sought by the fossil fuel industry. And, earlier this month, Trump announced the EPA would review and likely weaken Obama’s fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks in the post-2022 period.  While there may be obstacles to achieving all of this, it is still a huge step in the wrong direction if we want to have a serious chance at limiting the impacts of global warming. And, sadly, these deregulatory these moves were all sought by the Chamber, which is no stranger to battling Obama-era environmental policies. In the course of just 3 years, the Chamber opposed the EPA in court 26 times and they have lobbied on these issues for years.

Most recently, the U.S. House of Representatives did the bidding of corporate America by using the CRA to vote to repeal Broadband Privacy Protections, which prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from tracking the browsing habits of customers without their permission and place obligations on ISPs to keep their customers’ data secure, giving customers more control over their personal data and privacy. Earlier this month the Chamber sent a letter to the Science and Transportation Committee leadership urging members to vote in favor of this CRA stripping Americans of their internet privacy.

So there you have it. Trump and the GOP Congress are successfully dismantling many important public protections including those protecting clean water, clean air, worker health and safety, and internet privacy. And the Chamber has been behind most of these regulatory rollbacks we’ve seen in the past 60 days. While Steven Bannon may falsely claim that deconstructing the “administrative state” will benefit the people, the reality is that it is not the people that are behind this agenda, it is the Chamber and giant corporations that are pushing it. Empty populist rhetoric aside, the administration’s deregulatory zeal is proof positive of the overwhelming influence of its corporate masters.

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Exposing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: GOP Dark Money Machine

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Last week, Public Citizen’s Chamber Watch project began a series exposing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of the central actors pushing the modern day Republican Party’s extremist agenda. This week, we dive into the Chamber’s dark money spending during the 2016 election cycle. As discussed in last week’s blog, under Tom Donohue’s leadership, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has gone from a rather staid business advocacy organization with ties to both political parties to one that has become rabidly partisan.

In the 2016 election cycle, however, the Chamber took partisanship to even greater heights. For the first time ever, 100% of the Chamber’s elections spending benefited Republicans. What’s more, the Chamber formed an explicit alliance with leading Republicans (enter Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina) whose goal was to “Save the Senate” for the GOP and prevent a Democratic takeover of the closely-divided body.  The Chamber was so determined to preserve a Republican majority in the Senate that it even spent big against Democrat Evan Bayh, a man it used to employ, and top Chamber officials often disparaged and mocked Bayh and other Democratic candidates on social media.

The Chamber, like other groups organized under section 501(c) of the tax code, is not legally required to disclose the sources of the money it independently spends on elections. It and other dark money groups can serve as conduits for anonymous donations from corporations and other wealthy special interests to flood elections, making it particularly dangerous to democracy. In a recently released report, “The Republican Party and the Chamber of Secrets,” Chamber Watch analyzed campaign spending data from the Center for Responsive Politics to get a fuller picture of the Chamber’s election spending.

The Chamber was the second largest non-disclosing outside spender in the 2016 cycle, after the National Rifle Association, and was the largest non-disclosing outside spender on congressional races. It spent nearly $30 million, all to benefit Republican candidates. [Table 1]

 

The Chamber spent most heavily on races for the U.S. Senate, spending a total of $25.8 million in 10 Senate races. Nine Senate races saw at least $25 million in outside spending – political expenditures from outside groups that are independent of a candidates’ committee. The Chamber reported expenditures in eight of these nine races and in eight of the 10 congressional races that drew the most outside spending in 2016. [Table 2]

 

Both the Pennsylvania race, and the New Hampshire Senate contest broke spending records, with campaigns and outside groups spending $164 million and $121 million, respectively. In the Pennsylvania race between Pat Toomey (R) and Katie McGinty (D), the Chamber was the largest non-disclosing outside spender out of 27 groups, spending more than $6.1 million. In the New Hampshire race between Maggie Hassan (D) and Kelly Ayotte (R) the Chamber was also the largest non-disclosing spender out of 14 groups, spending more than $3 million, while the next largest non-discloser spent just over $700,000. The Nevada Senate race saw the third highest level of outside spending, with the Chamber spending more than $4.2 million, more than any of the other 26 dark money spenders. Out of the top ten races with the most outside spending, the Chamber was the highest spender among non-disclosing groups in five races. [Table 3]

Of the ten marquee Senate races in 2016, the Chamber spent in 9 of them.  The Republican candidates it supported won 7 of those 9, guaranteeing that the Senate would in fact be “saved” for the GOP. While it’s of course impossible to say that the Chamber’s dark money deluge in these races accounted for the slew of GOP victories, it certainly may have helped tip the balance in the closer races.

The Chamber’s deluge of dark money in congressional races should alarm all those concerned about the health of our democracy. When the nation’s leading business group can form an explicit alliance with one of our two major parties and solicit unlimited donations from anonymous donors, individual voters and small businesses should be worried that their voices will be shut out.

The Chamber’s 2016 election spending makes it abundantly clear that rather than being a voice for American business, the Chamber has become a very loud, very powerful voice for the Republican Party.

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U.S. Chamber Tips the Scales in State Supreme Court Elections

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a decades-long history of spending copious amount of money to elect pro-corporate judges to state courts. Back in 2000, the U.S. Chamber began a 10 million dollar effort to elect judges in five states- Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and Ohio.

The Chamber and its big business allies have spent millions to elect judges who will represent the corporate perspective in the court, limiting consumers’ rights to sue corporations, siding with corporate defendants over injured workers or consumers, blocking efforts to reduce pollution, and stymieing laws and regulations meant to protect public health and safety.

Outside spending groups like the Chamber of Commerce have the ability to make unlimited donations to other outside spending groups, in addition to not having limits on what they receive from their own donors. In some states, these groups don’t even have to disclose the monies they spend on electioneering activity. The Chamber and its big business allies have already surpassed prior records for TV spending in state Supreme Court elections. Total outside group spending for the current state supreme court election cycle is an estimated $15.6 million, exceeding the previous record set in 2011-12 by over $2 million.

The Chamber has gotten involved in several state judicial elections, pouring in millions to try and elect pro-corporate, anti-consumer judges.  In North Carolina, this year’s state Supreme Court election has the potential to flip the state Supreme Court’s majority from Republican-affiliated judges to Democratic-affiliated judges. The race, between incumbent Justice Robert Edmunds and his challenger, State Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan, has garnered national attention from social and racial justice groups because of the court’s role in congressional redistricting. Edmunds, who is being supported by the Chamber, previously ruled in favor of the state’s congressional map, despite it being ruled unconstitutional in August after 28 of 170 legislative districts were found to be racially gerrymandered. The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce recently received $1 million from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform that has been spent on TV ads supporting Edmunds.

Another “dark” money outside spender in North Carolina is Fair Judges, a group that received $300,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which is the biggest spender in state Supreme Court elections. The Chamber, which contributed over $2 million in 2016 and over $3 million in 2014 to nationwide efforts, is the largest donor to the RSLC, contributing more than twice as much as the next biggest donor.

What’s even scarier than the amount of outside dark money spending flooding into state judicial races is the negative nature of the ads that are being paid for with this money.

In Montana, a state Supreme Court race between pro-corporate law professor Kristen Juras and district court judge Dirk Sandefur provides a startling example. “Child Porn,” “Satanic Ritual,” and “Raping 10 year old” jump out in glaring block letters set against an ominous background on an attack site against Judge Sandefur. The site, StopSetEmFreeSandefur.com, is run by a group that has received more than $200,000  from the Chamber-funded RSLC. It houses a 30 second ad, stating “for some, it’s Judge Dirk Sandefur’s refusal to give prison time to two child pornographers, for others, the last straw is Judge Sandefur’s mere seven year sentence for a man guilty of repeatedly raping a 10-year old girl, but for all, Dirk Sandefur’s decision to give no prison time to a man convicted of sexually assaulting a toddler and holding a gun to the child’s head…is the last straw.”

While much of nation’s attention has been focused on an unconventional presidential race, the problem of unlimited, undisclosed “dark” money and nasty attack ads has been largely overlooked in the nation’s equally important judicial elections, and North Carolina and Montana provide only a snapshot of the Chamber’s influence over our courts. When excessive money is spent on judicial elections by the Chamber  it raises the question of who the courts really serve.

Outside spending may leave judges feeling beholden to the corporate special interests that put them into office, threatening the integrity of our judicial system and reinforcing the concern that citizen voices are being drowned out.

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The Chamber of Commerce & Big Business: Transforming Democracy into Corporatocracy One State at a Time

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Earlier this month, The Guardian published an investigation into the network of politicians, donors, and groups that raised tens of millions of dollars to defend Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and several Wisconsin state senators who faced recall elections in 2011 and 2012. They also looked at conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, Jr., who was up for re-election in 2011.

It is estimated that an astounding $137 million was spent on the recall races, with millions more spent on the Supreme Court race. The Guardian exposé, based on over 1500 pages of leaked emails and other documents, gives us a bird’s eye view into the dirty business of raising boatloads of cash from corporate special interests and the very rich.

This trove of leaked documents is particularly important because Wisconsin law does not require the disclosure of monies spent on “issue advocacy” ads that praise or criticize a candidate without explicitly calling on voters to vote for or against the candidate. Many groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ran “issue advocacy” ads in these races, and therefore their names do not appear in publicly available databases of elections spending in Wisconsin. The leaked documents offer the public a chance to peak behind the legal curtain that shields deep-pocketed special interest groups from having to disclose their electioneering activities.

ChamberWatch wanted to learn more about the role played by the Chamber in financing the deluge of ads that dominated the airwaves in the months leading up to these elections. So we reviewed the 1500 pages of leaked documents that The Guardian made available online.

We found that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as the Wisconsin state chamber, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, played major roles as outside spenders in these races, particularly in the Supreme Court race.

Tellingly, when Walker’s chief fundraising consultant laid out an initial blueprint for funding his recall election, she listed the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform as a major potential donor along with the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, major corporations, and CEOs of major corporations, among others.

The primary evidence that the Chamber spent money on behalf of Walker comes from an email sent by Chamber head of communications Tom Collamore to one of Walker’s campaign consultants. The email includes a Wall Street Journal article about a $2 million ad buy by the Wisconsin state chamber promoting Walker. (The total spent by the state chamber on the recall elections was at least $4.7 million). The consultant then forwards the email, writing “Tom is a good friend…we have had many conversations about Scott…they know the significance of this race and that is why they are so supportive…and will continue to be so.”

Unfortunately, none of the leaked documents indicate exactly how much money the Chamber spent on the governor’s race. However, we know that a PAC associated with the Republican Governors Association was one of the largest outside spenders in the governor’s race. We also know that the Chamber gave $1.25 million in 2012 to the RGA, making it the sixth largest donor to the group. Of course, we don’t know how much if any of this money was spent in Wisconsin.

The evidence of Chamber elections spending is even more clear cut with respect to the Supreme Court election. One of Walker’s top advisors writes that he assumes the Chamber is in for a minimum of $1.1 million for the Supreme Court race. A subsequent email from the same advisor mentions a Chamber ad buy of $1.5 million for the Supreme Court race. Judging by estimates of total spending it is a safe bet that the Chamber was one of the largest if not the largest spender on the Supreme Court race.

The leaked documents also reveal that at the same time the U.S. Chamber and Wisconsin state chamber were showering Walker and Prosser with money, the state chamber was also providing corporations including Altria, Walmart, Kimberly-Clark, Xcel Energy and AT&T access to Walker as well as lobbying him on unemployment insurance and workers compensation.

And therein lies the reason why the Chamber and the large corporations it represents were “so supportive” of Walker and Prosser and why they spent so much money bolstering their reelection campaigns. Walker and his conservative allies in the state legislature were receptive to lobbying by Big Business pushing an anti-worker agenda. They had just passed a major bill eviscerating worker rights and protections. And Prosser could be counted on to protect this legislation from any legal challenges. Without Walker, without a conservative majority in the state legislature, or without Prosser, not only would it have been possible to undo the damage done by this legislation, but Big Business would no longer have the opportunity to get additional items on its anti-worker wish list enacted into law and upheld by the courts.

The leaked Wisconsin documents paint a picture of a political system almost entirely reliant on—and beholden to—big money corporate donors. And the U.S. Chamber and its affiliates stand at the nexus of this unholy alliance between Big Business and the political class. Perhaps it’s time to admit the obvious: our democracy is now a corporatocracy.

Whose Opportunity Is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Talking About?

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Posted by Sam Jewler on January 09, 2014

Whose opportunity does U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue talk about when he talks about opportunity?

The Chamber’s policies might give the largest corporations the opportunity to grow, but that is often not the same thing as growth and opportunity for the American people. After-tax corporate profits in the third quarter topped 11 percent of GDP for the first time since the records started in 1947. But everyday Americans aren’t doing so well, with real median household income declining 4.4 percent since 2009.

When the Chamber opposes increasing minimum wages to coincide with growth in productivity and the economy overall, one must ask whose growth and opportunity the Chamber is pushing for.

When the Chamber pushes for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would ship oil out of the country, likely leading to higher U.S. energy prices and higher profits for companies, while handing much of the environmental risk to the people of the Midwest and South, whose growth and opportunity are we talking about?

In his 2014 State of American Business Address, Donohue referred to the Chamber’s National Litigation Center as a “public interest” law firm – an insidious mischaracterization for a group that that works relentlessly to restrict consumers’ access to courts and ability to hold corporations accountable for bad behavior.

And we have to wonder what the Chamber’s rampant political spending and attempts to undermine laws against bribing foreign officials say about its respect for democracy.

In December 2013, John Cridland, the director-general of the U.S. Chamber’s British counterpart, the Confederation of British Industry, said, “As the financial situation of many firms begins to turn a corner, one of the biggest challenges facing businesses is to deliver growth that will mean better pay and more opportunities for all their employees after a prolonged squeeze. … There are still far too many people stuck in minimum wage jobs without routes to progression – and that’s a serious challenge that businesses and the government must address.”

Until we hear Mr. Donohue say – and act on – something like the CBI’s example, the evidence overshadows his words: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants growth and opportunity for the largest corporations. Everything else is public relations.

Sam Jewler is the press officer at Public Citizen’s U.S. Chamber Watch. To learn more about Chamber Watch, follow @uschamberwatch on Twitter, like us on Facebook and sign up for email updates

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hits $1 Billion Lobbying Milestone

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Posted by Jake Parent on July 31, 2013

Ever wonder why our political system seems to be dominated by corporate interests?

An excellent report just out from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) helps shed light on that very question.

Through some impressive tracking work, CRP showed that one of the biggest mouthpieces for Big Business – the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – has become the first organization to spend a total of $1 billion on lobbying since CRP started keeping track in 1998.

In comparison, the report showed the next highest spender during that time was General Electric, at just shy of $294 million.

Although this year so far has been slow for the U.S. Chamber (in terms of reported dollars spent on lobbying), the group’s spending has increased greatly since current President Tom Donohue took over the organization in 1997.

The year after Donohue started leading the U.S. Chamber, the group spent just $17 million. By 2010, that number had risen to $157 million.

The U.S. Chamber’s Agenda

The organization now reportedly staffs 88 in-house lobbyists in addition to others hired through outside firms. In 2012 alone, 183 individuals from 33 different lobbying groups represented the U.S. Chamber, according to the report.

So that leaves one to wonder…

What exactly is the U.S. Chamber using this money to fight for?

The U.S. Chamber has a broad agenda that includes supporting outdated energy policies like the Keystone XL pipeline and attempting to forestall implementation of the important financial regulations we need to enact to protect our economy from another financial crisis.

A Growing Difference of Opinion

Although it claims to “protect free enterprise,” the policy stances of the U.S. Chamber have been losing it the support of some in the business community.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the construction firm Skanska left the U.S. Chamber because the company felt its interest in improved green building standards were not being represented..

In addition, several big name companies like Yahoo, Apple, and PG&E have all left the U.S. Chamber because the organization chose to support policies the companies felt were opposed to the firms’ business interests.

Others like Google, (although still currently members) have voiced similar concerns as well.
And these companies aren’t the only ones raising concerns.

Recently, U.S. Chamber Watch and our allies from the Corporate Reform Coalition gathered more than 300,000 consumer signatures on a citizen’s petition and got 26 investor groups to send letters asking Google to end its ties with the U.S. Chamber.

We hope the leaders at Google listen.

By spending such a huge sum of money on lobbying, the U.S. Chamber is effectively drowning out the voices of citizens – those who matter most if we are to have a healthy political system.

Jake Parent is the coordinator of Public Citizen’s U.S. Chamber Watch. To learn more about Chamber Watch, follow @uschamberwatch on Twitter andsign up for email updates