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By Claire Kaplan, Advocacy Intern 

If you drive on highways (or walk and bike underneath their overpasses) you already know that maintaining our roads is critically important. But infrastructure means more than roads, highways and bridges. It means schools, hospitals, water and even the internet. Infrastructure is one of the most essential services a government can provide for its people, and failure can mean catastrophe. This year, the Trump administration and its ally the Chamber of Commerce have infrastructure reform at the top of their agendas, and both the White House and Chamber have released plans on the topic in the recent past.  And just like we saw last year with healthcare and taxes, “reform” is code for big-business giveaways that leave American communities, especially low-income communities, out in the cold. Here are three key proposals from the Trump and Chamber plans:

Deregulation and Steamrolling Public Protections

The most predictable proposal present in both the Chamber’s plan and that of the Trump administration is deregulation (they call it “eliminating regulatory barriers”). Both plans argue that deregulation will cut costs without sacrificing quality. There are two problems with this argument. One, unsurprisingly, is that deregulation often compromises both quality and safety. The second problem with deregulation of infrastructure projects is  that we would give up the benefits of safeguards while not at all likely to save any of the promised money, either.

In the case of the Trump plan, the most significant deregulatory risk is to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which protects species and habitats but also people and communities from polluting projects.  And, the Chamber’s infrastructure plan specifically threatens drinking water safety by proposing to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA’s) ability to veto building permits for projects that negatively impact US waterways, which would increase the risk of water contamination from new highways, dams and pipelines. Its provisions for private leasing of federal lands could also allow pipelines to be built through national parks. Opposing regulation is par for the course for the Chamber of Commerce, which in the past has spoken against the Volks Rule (which strengthens employer obligations to maintain records of workplace injuries and illnesses) as well as other worker-safety regulations like one that protects workers from exposure to high levels of crystalline silica dust on the job. The Chamber even opposes compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

Deregulation will not save money on infrastructure projects  because repairing and rebuilding shoddy construction often costs more than simply building it right the first time (sometimes a lot more). Consider a 1960’s construction project in Florida to help control flooding from the Kissimmee River. The original project did not serve its intended purpose, instead becoming stagnant and ultimately polluting the river, killing almost all plants and wildlife in the area. Whereas it cost $194 million in today’s dollars to build it, cleaning up the mess will cost at least $1 billion. That wouldn’t happen today with our current regulatory system for infrastructure projects, that requires robust environmental review.

Not only would steamrolling environmental review rules do unacceptable damage to our environment, these disasters become problems for taxpayers to deal with. Without regulation, communities would be left like those of the Kissimmee River project– faced with a poorly-done project with benefits that never materialize, now consuming more than five times its initial cost simply to reverse the damage it has done. Truly, deregulation would lead to the worst of both worlds.

The Threat of Public-Private Partnerships

Another commonality between the Trump and Chamber plans is a focus on private investment and public-private partnerships. The Trump plan follows the Chamber’s lead by expanding the use of Private Activity Bonds (a key financing tool for public-private partnerships, or “P3s”), allowing privatization of federal infrastructure, and reducing or eliminating constraints to P3s in transit, transportation, provision of water, and even the Veterans Affairs department. The Chamber and the Trump administration claim that these P3s will lead to high-quality services and projects that cost less and give the public more choice, but these claims are erroneous.

First, P3s are not cheaper since private contracts are notorious for their hidden costs. Some of them are to the local government – like when Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels had to pay a private company $447,000 of taxpayer money to offset “losses” from when the governor waived tolls for motorists escaping a massive flood. Some of them are to the public, like when a Chicago consortium operating the city’s parking meters required the city to raise rates in parts of the city by as much as 800% over four years. Private companies typically charge 59% more than public entities to provide utilities like water (in Coatesville, PA the increase was 282% between 2001 and 2015). When a private company began charging tolls on the MLK Freeway in Virginia for the first time in decades, the governor had to step in and renegotiate the deal after some residents received bills totaling more than $10,000. Private companies expect revenue, sometimes an unrealistic amount, and if they don’t get it, they’ll take steps to recover the difference.

The Chamber claims that cities will be able to choose among competing bids, so they can just avoid these bad deals. Well, that may be true in rich areas, but low-income communities won’t be able to offer such lucrative contracts. Some public projects just aren’t profitable on their own. To expect private companies to take a loss in order to help low-income communities is naive. Even if these projects are taken on, expect user fees to be so high that many residents will no longer be able to afford the prices of essential services like water to their homes or the tolls on the roads to their jobs.

This isn’t always true, of course – there are plenty of P3s that do provide services at a discounted cost. Unfortunately, most savings claimed by private contractors are due to huge layoffs and underpayment of wages (specifically, from finding ways to avoid having to pay prevailing wage requirements). That’s what United Water did when they signed a deal to operate Atlanta’s water system in 1999, then proceeded to fire more than half the system’s employees and cut training for the rest. In 2003, the city decided they’d had enough of constant service problems, water-main breaks and even occasional boil-only alerts. They dissolved the partnership.

P3s are supposed to give the public more say, at least – but even this claim is questionable. If the city of Chicago wants to put more bike lanes on its road, they are restricted from making these improvements. Why? Because a private company runs their parking meters, and more people bicycling means fewer paying tolls. The city also has to reimburse the company if they want to close a street (say, for a parade or street fair). The contract went through city council in four days, with no hearings or opportunities for public input. Now, regretful city officials are locked in to the deal. Public-private partnership contracts are also known to contain “non-compete” clauses to protect their profits. That company in Norfolk, VA charging drivers $10,000 in tolls put a clause in their contract limiting the city’s ability to erect or improve “alternative facilities” for drivers who can’t afford such hefty fees. Who exactly has “more say” in these deals? Not the city’s residents.

The bottom line is, the most important thing for a private company isn’t providing high-quality service. It’s not improving the community. It’s not even the well-being of their workers. It’s profit. If other considerations – like safety, pollution, or quality – conflict with profit, expect private corporations to put profit first.

Cutting federal funding

Not only does the Trump administration agree with the Chamber’s mistaken belief that safeguarding public protections isn’t necessary, and that private investment is preferable to public, but they have an additional shared priority for infrastructure reform: they don’t want the federal government to pay for it. The administration’s plan calls for $200 billion in federal investment, but it also calls for $280 billion in cuts to services. That’s a $1.40 loss for every new $1 available, and will lead to massive job losses. State and local governments, used to shouldering 20% of the costs of new infrastructure projects, will now be asked to take on 80%. Worse, under the Incentives Program, even the meager federal funds still available will be preferentially allocated to projects that show strong revenue or revenue potential (i.e. the projects where they are least needed). Some cities will be able to raise the money by increasing state and local taxes, but others will be forced into public-private partnerships to try to make up the difference. Communities too poor to raise revenue through taxation or attract profit-motivated investors face the prospect of simply being unable to afford to fix their broken infrastructure at all. Propaganda from the Trump administration calls this a “$1.5 trillion plan” for infrastructure investment. Don’t be fooled. Most of this money is coming from two places: hypothetical private investors, and taxpayers.

Both the Chamber and the Trump infrastructure plans laud running the government “like a business.” That should alarm you because, to a business, you are nothing more than a revenue-generating customer. But Americans are not the government’s customers. We are its owners. Customers just pay and take what’s available, but owners can demand something better. Stand with Public Citizen and organizations around the country to say: our schools, highways, hospitals, and water are not for sale to the highest bidder. We demand a government that puts people over profits when it comes to infrastructure investments.

Cross-posted on Daily Kos and Citizen Vox.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sided against 83% of the American public by heavily pushing to repeal the rules that ensured net neutrality. Likewise, polling on the Republican tax bill in the final days before passage showed it 22 points underwater with the public, meanwhile  a Public Citizen report found that the Chamber had 100 lobbyists working in support of the bill.

The Trump Administration, however, overlooked the largest online protest in history and daily tax protester arrests and gave the Chamber both items on its wish list. The theory was that these massive handouts to big corporations would super-charge growth for the middle class. So let’s take a look at what’s happening with two likely Chamber members that benefited from both of these decisions.

In December, Comcast got big headlines for announcing a one-time bonus for its employees and over $50 billion in infrastructure investment over five years. All, however, was not as it appeared.

It turned out that Comcast, the most hated company in America, had secretly laid-off 500 employees days before Christmas. One former employee worker stated that they had to sign a “nondisclosure agreement as part of a severance package”, even though he only worked in sales.  Just this week they notified state officials that planned to lay-off 405 more employees outside Atlanta. (They did find room in their budget to be the most active corporate lobbyist on taxes in 2017.)

As for the capital expenditures, an Ars Technica analysis found that unless Comcast goes well above the promised $50 billion, it would actually represent a smaller annual increase in Comcast’s infrastructure spending than in recent years.

AT&T is another presumed Chamber member that benefited from both actions and promised to greatly invest in its business. Like Comcast, it too made a splashy announcement about a Christmas bonus for its workers and tried to bury news that they were laying off workers (in AT&T’s case thousands of them.) The Communications Workers of America have filed a lawsuit over the layoffs.

Last spring, AT&T’s CEO was very clear what massive tax cuts for his corporation would mean: every billion dollars in savings would mean an additional 7,000 good paying jobs at AT&T. Yet, an August op-ed in the New York Times by the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out that “AT&T enjoyed an effective tax rate of just 8 perfect between 2008 and 2015, despite recording a profit” and during that time reduced its workforce by nearly 80,000 people. It did however find a spare $34 billion for stock buybacks during that time, which serve little purpose outside of increasing value to investors.

The Chamber would have us believe that if we just accommodate the every whim of big business, this time things will be different and the public will be the real winners. History tells a different story and we can see it playing out again right now with Comcast and AT&T’s workforce reductions.

Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pushing for massive tax cuts for giant corporations and the managerial elite. In a new million dollar ad campaign launched last week, the Chamber depicts average Americans at work, whether behind a cash register or on a factory floor, while the words “create jobs,” “families,” and “the American dream” flash across the screen. In each of these ads, the speakers demand “tax reform,” without ever really specifying what that means. It all seems innocent enough, and could easily fool viewers unfamiliar with the Chamber. But make no mistake, dig down, and the Chamber isn’t interested in tax policies that will invest in Main Street businesses and working Americans; it wants huge cuts for its corporate membership and the ultra-wealthy who run and own these companies. The Chamber’s new ad campaign is just the group’s latest attempt to advance a Big Business agenda by pretending that it would help working people and small businesses.

So how exactly is the Chamber proposing to change our tax code? Its “Tax Reform Now” website is remarkably devoid of specifics, limiting itself to calling for “pro-growth” tax reform. “Pro-growth” is Chamber-speak for trickle-down economics: cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy and employment and wage growth will magically appear. (Of course, the data prove trickle-down to be nothing more than a right-wing fantasy.)

The Chamber’s new ad campaign doesn’t offer many specifics either. The ads may call for closing loopholes, but the Chamber fails to mention exactly which loopholes.

If you want to really understand what the Chamber wants to get out of tax “reform,” you have to look at the group’s history of lobbying for a bevy of tax giveaways for giant corporations and the ultra-rich. Let’s take, for example, the subject of closing loopholes, mentioned in the Chamber’s ads. Unfortunately,  it doesn’t seem likely that one of the loopholes the Chamber wants closed is the CEO Bonus loophole, which allows companies to exploit a quirk in the law and give their CEOs multimillion-dollar bonuses and deduct this amount from their taxable income. This loophole effectively subsidizes already out of control executive pay while increasing the incentives for excessive risk-taking, and it costs taxpayers an estimated $5 billion a year!

Nor are we holding our breath waiting for the Chamber to demand that the carried-interest loophole be closed, given that they have supported retaining the loophole in the past. This loophole allows hedge fund and private equity fund managers to claim part of what is really salaried income as capital gains instead, which allows them to pay only a 20 percent tax rate as opposed to the 39.6 percent income tax they likely otherwise would pay. This loophole benefits only 2,000 taxpayers yet it is blowing a hole in the budget, estimated at around $2 billion per year.

While the Chamber at least mentions closing loopholes in its ads, there are lots of things it doesn’t mention, probably because they benefit corporations and the wealthy and not the working people featured in the ads. Let’s start with the Chamber’s supportfor a rate cut for “pass-through” businesses (companies that file taxes through the owners’ individual taxes versus paying corporate tax.) Such a rate cut would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

While the Chamber may claim that cutting the tax rate on pass-through enterprises would benefit small businesses, more than 70 percent of filers with pass-through income already pay rates at or below 15 percent, meaning they would see no benefit from the proposal. The vast majority of this tax cut will really go to the Chamber’s millionaire and billionaire allies, not to mom and pop shops. What’s more, real small businesses may be hurt because big tax cuts may result in big spending cuts, thereby reducing funding for services vital to Main Street businesses, including investment in infrastructure, education, and assistance for small businesses.

Another item on the Chamber’s tax cut wish list is abolishing the estate tax. The Chamber has been a staunch opponent of the estate tax for years, claiming that it harms family businesses, though that’s plainly not true. Under the current rules, the estate tax only applies to estates valued at more than is $5.49 million and $10.98 million per couple. Estimates show that only 50 small farms and small business estates in all of the United States are likely to pay estate tax in 2017.

The Chamber has argued time and time again that tax “reform” must include cutting the corporate tax rate. The Chamber loves to claim that our taxes are the highest in the developed world, and argues that by making America’s corporate tax rate competitive with the rest of the world, jobs will be kept in America. What the Chamber fails to mention is that the effective rate companies pay in the U.S. is actually much lower  (18.6 percent on average, with some industries like gas and electric companies paying a rate in the low single digits). What’s more, many wealthy corporations frequently get away with paying no federal income taxes. And a recent study has shown that companies that pay lower effective rates have actually reduced employment while companies that pay higher effective rates have added employment. Slashing the corporate tax rate as the Chamber wants will pad the pockets of CEOs and rich stockholders, while doing very little to spur investment or create jobs.

The tax code changes championed by the Chamber and seemingly agreed to by Trump and the GOP are rigged in favor of billionaires and big corporations – they constitute a massive tax giveaway to the super rich and a payback scheme for the Chamber’s big business members.

So don’t believe those Chamber ads you may see on TV – the Chamber’s version of tax ”reform” won’t help the working Americans featured in the ads, but it would line the pockets of the corporations and oligarchs who least need a tax cut.

As the United States, Canada, and Mexico begin talks aimed at renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is warningthe Trump administration not to touch investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in the existing agreement.

What is ISDS and why is it so important to the Chamber, the nation’s largest corporate lobbying group?

ISDS gives multinational corporations the ability to challenge government policies not before the courts, but before international arbitration tribunals made up of three corporate lawyers. Multinational corporations can avail themselves of ISDS to challenge laws and regulations protecting consumer health and safety, the environment, and the stability of the financial system, among other things. If an ISDS tribunal rules in favor of a corporation, a government can be ordered to pay the corporation unlimited sums of taxpayer money, including for the loss of claimed future profits. What’s more, the arbitrators are not bound to legal precedent and their decisions cannot be appealed.

Quite obviously, ISDS is extremely problematic for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it undermines national sovereignty and the rule of law. Instead of national courts ruling on corporate challenges to national laws and regulations, unaccountable, supranational corporate lawyers-cum-arbitrators are given the power to decide whether laws enacted by our democratically elected government violate the special rights granted to corporations under NAFTA. How’s that for respecting the rule of law?

But beyond the foundational problem of handing over such immense power to supranational arbitrators, ISDS also presents the problem of being irretrievably riven by conflicts of interest. A corporate lawyer who represents a multinational corporation in one ISDS case may also serve as an arbitrator for a different ISDS case brought by a different corporation. Arbitrators are therefore incentivized to come up with novel legal interpretations favorable to corporate claimants which could in turn result in more corporations bringing more ISDS cases thereby creating more legal work for them in their capacity as lawyers. Even worse, arbitrators may have business or financial relationships with companies whose cases they are hearing.

The dangers presented by ISDS aren’t only theoretical; they are all too real. More than $390 million in taxpayer money has been paid to corporations in ISDS claims under NAFTA, with more than $36 billion pending in ongoing NAFTA cases.

In 2015, a NAFTA ISDS tribunal ruled against Canada in a case brought by a U.S. mining company. Canada’s crime? That its environmental impact assessment thwarted the American company’s plan to expand a quarry located in an environmentally sensitive area. The Canadian government was ordered to pay more than $100 million in taxpayers’ money to the American company.

Or consider an ISDS tribunal’s 2015 ruling against the Canadian government, ordering it to fork over more than $17 million in taxpayers’ money to Exxon. In this case, the government required any oil company operating in Newfoundland to contribute a small share of oil revenue to fund research and development in the economically struggling province in order to obtain a drilling license.

While the U.S. (and U.S. taxpayers) have thus far dodged the bullet of adverse ISDS rulings, we are far from immune to its dangers. For example, in 2016, TransCanada, the oil company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, sued the U.S. government before an ISDS tribunal, claiming $15 billion in compensation as a result of the Obama administration’s decision not to approve the construction of the pipeline. When Donald Trump reversed the decision, allowing the pipeline to move forward, TransCanada’s case remained in limbo until the White House clarified that a previous Trump executive order calling for pipelines to be constructed with American-made steel and pipe would not apply to Keystone XL. The State Department then promptly issued the permit, and TransCanada dropped its case. Close observers suspected that the quick permit approval and the Buy American steel/pipe waiver were likely the “settlement” price extracted from the Trump administration by TransCanada for dropping its NAFTA claim.

It’s only a matter of time before U.S. taxpayers are left on the hook, ordered to pay a corporation millions and perhaps billions of dollars by an ISDS tribunal. ISDS cases were once rather rare, with only 50 being filed in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s combined. But they are now exploding in number, with roughly 50 cases being filed in each of the last six years.

You might think that the United States Chamber of Commerce would show some concern for preserving the integrity of the American legal system and the rule of law, both of which have greatly contributed to the economic success of the United States. You would be mistaken. The Chamber’s dogged support of ISDS – an unaccountable, conflict-riven system than undermines state sovereignty in favor of corporate power – proves once again that it prioritizes corporate profits above all else.

For more information on ISDS, check out www.isdscorporateattacks.org. For more information on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, you can always visit us on www.chamberofcommercewatch.org or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.