How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Top Corporate Funders Dictate the Agenda for the 112th Congress
FULL REPORT
In the upcoming days, the Republican leadership will produce its legislative agenda for the 112th Congress, an agenda they’ve already started planning. It wasn’t hard for them to create this agenda: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which pledged to spend more than $75 million in anonymous corporate money to influence this fall’s elections, provided an agenda for them, driven by and for the sixteen companies that provide more than half of the U.S. Chamber’s contributions. The U.S. Chamber has already developed the talking points and plans to implement that agenda. Now that its election war chest has rented it a Congress, look for an agenda from the newly minted Republican-led House that reflects the U.S. Chamber’s priorities – which in turn reflect the interests of the member corporations that make the largest contributions to the Chamber’s coffers.
The bottom line: the handful of corporations that secretly fund the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are influencing national policy, and spent millions of dollars to elect congress members that will pursue their agenda. Here are the top five priorities the U.S. Chamber’s corporate Congress can be expected to pursue.
- H.R. 1: The Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts: Keeping Corporate CEOs Rich
- H.R. 2: “Personalize” Social Security: Putting Earned Income Programs at Risk to Pay for Bush Tax Cuts
- H.R. 3: Repeal/Weaken the Affordable Care Act: Protect Insurance Companies
- H.R. 4: Protect Tax Benefits for Outsourcers: Keep Jobs Overseas
- H.R. 5: Gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Choosing Big Banks on Wall Street over Small Business and the Rest of Us