Not Your Father's Chamber of Commerce: National Organization Is Now a Tool of the Radical Right

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is often seen as an extension of the local Chambers of Commerce with which many of us grew up -- the staid, nonpartisan organizations that not only advocated for local businesses, but were also a part of the broader fabric of communities across America. They lobbied local governments, but they also promoted small towns' business districts, sponsored local parades and outfitted Little League teams.

But that image couldn't be further out of date. The organization was formed some 90 years ago to represent an umbrella group of American businesses' diverse interests. But under the leadership of Thomas J. Donahue, it has become increasingly partisan, even reactionary, in its steadfast opposition to even modestly progressive proposals in Congress, including those that are in the apparent interests of some of its member firms.

Matt Stoller noted in 2006, "the national Chamber of Commerce isn't pro-business … it's just a fully captured right-wing organization that has been taken over by the Republican Party."

What distinguishes it from other conservative lobbying shops is its massive resources; the CoC has a budget of upwards of $150 million per year, and it throws that into a wide array of affiliate organizations that influence public policy in myriad ways and at every level of government.

Given its reach and impact on our public-policy debates, the CoC has operated under the radar to some degree. But its claim to represent a consensus of American businesses -- presumably a pragmatic role, given the diversity of its members' interests -- took a hit last week with the high-profile defection of a number of major firms because of the CoC's unyielding opposition to the very moderate and distinctly business-friendly climate-change bills wending through Congress. 

Such corporate heavyweights as Nike, GE and Apple -- and energy giants like Exelon and Pacific Energy and Gas -- have recently either distanced themselves from the Chamber, resigned their seats on its board of directors or quit the organization altogether in protest of what PG&E CEO Peter Darby called the CoC's "extreme position" on global warming and "disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of [the] challenges [it poses]."

Not Your Father's Chamber

The Chamber, which spends more on lobbying than any other organization in the country, has become a kind of unelected brake on the engine of progressive change -- the head of a massively influential network of deep-pocketed organizations whose essential purpose is preventing the creation of a more just society.

Which is fine with the Chamber's leadership; Donohue has lamented that democracy doesn't always serve the interests of his corporate constituents.

In 2007, lamenting Congress's failure to pass "fast-track" trade authority, Donahue said: "I've sort of come to the point that I don't blame the politicians as much as I blame their constituents."

Donahue has become Washington's most powerful advocate for corporate America, and you'd be hard pressed to find a better representative of the corporate culture that permeates our executive suites these days.

Writing of the Chamber's campaign to avoid new regulations for the financial industry in the midst of a severe recession that Wall Street's recklessness brought about, SEIU Vice President Anna Burger noted Donahue's checkered history "as a board member for companies plagued by accounting scandals, insider-trading investigations and massive shareholder losses."

In 2006, the New York Times reported that Donahue had been at the center of an insider-trading scandal uncovered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, noting that he had "been a force behind the Chamber of Commerce's efforts to defang" new accounting regulations. What's more, according to the Times, the organization had "the SEC's enforcement division in its sights; one Chamber priority is to 'curtail the SEC's overly broad authority to launch investigations.' "

A Position Too Far?

Nowhere has the Chamber's capture by the conservative movement been clearer than on the issue of global warming.

After years of pushing dubious claims designed to muddy the waters around the danger posed by man-made climate change, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce offered up its greatest whopper on the subject last week, brazenly claiming that it had never questioned the science behind calls to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions.

This just days after William Kovacs, the Chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, embarrassingly called for a "Scopes Monkey Trial" -- fashioned after the famous clash of creationists and evolutionary biologists in the 1920s -- to bring "the science of climate change" under examination by a jury.

That was the background for last week's high-profile defections. Some of the corporations fleeing the Chamber may be acting on genuine principle, but they're also responding to basic business logic.

As Josh Marshall wrote, "It's not hard, for instance, to understand why a company like Nike, which markets overwhelmingly to a younger demographic and to some degree is in the business of marketing cool, would not like to be associated with anti-climate-change science extremism."

Earlier this year, in announcing a $100 million campaign opposing Democrats' proposals on a range of issues, including climate change, Donahue warned of the risks posed by "attacks by anti-business activists" on "America's free enterprise values."

Pete Altman, director of the National Resources Defense Council's climate campaign, noted that "Donohue left out businesses … which support federal climate legislation," listing around two dozen of the Chamber's own members that had gone on record supporting the proposals in Congress.

I fact, an NRDC analysis of the positions taken by the Chamber's board of directors reveals that opposition to climate-change legislation is hardly a consensus position among American businesses [document]:

... the staff of the U.S. Chamber is representing the views held by a small fraction of its board -- just four members out of 122 members on the board of directors. These views, which question the scientific consensus and reject the need for federal regulation to reduce global-warming pollution, stand in contrast to the views expressed by 19 members of the Chamber's board that support federal regulations with goals to reduce total U.S. global warming pollution.

Altman added: "You read that right: Only 23 members of the U.S. Chamber's board have a publicly stated position on climate change, and more than 80 percent are not on board with the U.S. Chamber's 'Dr. No' position on climate policy action."

According to a report by Josh Harkinson in Mother Jones, the Chamber's leadership, faced with a severe split among its members, may have broken its own internal guidelines in adopting its position on climate change, bypassing a required vote by its board of directors (Harkinson also disputes the Chamber's claim of 3 million member firms).  

And while the Chamber's anti-scientific position on climate change may not be in the interest of all of its member firms, it does fit neatly with Donahue's.

Writing on Grist Magazine's blog, Joseph Romm (also citing the NRDC), noted that Donahue, "who is resisting calls from his own board members to stop fighting against federal climate policy, is being richly compensated by Union Pacific, a company which -- along with some of its key businesses partners -- is vigorously fighting against federal climate policy."

The railroad, a major coal hauler, has said [PDF] that climate-change legislation could "reduce the amount of traffic we handle and have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition, and liquidity." Union Pacific has paid Donahue annual retainers of at least $1,134,333 since 1998, according to the NRDC.

Given that a majority of Americans believe climate change is indeed a threat, that the government should indeed regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and that most support the broad outlines of the "cap-and-trade" bills working through Congress -- even if it means slightly higher energy bills -- the Chamber's stance is an example of it fighting against the interests of not only a share of its member firms, but of the lion's share of those firms' employees and customers.

All of which belies the image many still hold of the Chamber as a boring, more or less non-ideological and wholly nonpartisan business association.

While it once fit that description, it has since been co-opted by a more staunchly conservative leadership and swayed by a conservative movement that has become more animated and reactionary in recent decades. It is no longer an extension of your town's local Chamber, it is a vital cog in the conservative noise machine.

And as the Nikes and Apples jump ship, it may prove to be the Chamber's stance on climate change that proves to be the beginning of the end of its creditability as a non-ideological entity.