The US Chamber of Commerce recently announced that it would spend $100 million to
develop a sweeping national advocacy campaign encompassing advertising, education, political activities, new media, and grassroots organizing to defend and advance America’s free enterprise values in the face of rapid government growth and attacks by anti-business activists.
This is extremely dangerous and we should understand the relevant history. A great source is Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism by Elizabeth Fones-Wolf. It documents how business launched a full scale attack after WWII to halt the expansion of the labor movement and pass the Taft-Hartley Act.
But today there are other targets as well. The Chamber lists them:
Many union leaders, some environmentalists, and a growing force of anti-business activists
The union leaders are standard here, but the "anti-business activists" that the Chamber opposes also include those seeking health care reform. The Chamber will spend at least a few million dollars specifically advocating "responsible health reform," meaning reform that leaves the power of private insurance companies intact (or even expanded).
The Chamber is not stupid. It understands that health reform is basically unstoppable, but seeks to limit the options on the table to those that enrich its members. This includes removing the small public plan in HR 3200 that would insure 10 million people, and generally opposing anything not built on the current employer based system. Certainly anything resembling national health insurance must be removed from debate.
A similar but smaller campaign was also launched by America's Health Insurance Plans, spending at least $1 million to advocate for health reform--but only bipartisan health reform that enjoys some Republican support. To goal is to
* Build on the current employer-based system;
* Make common-sense changes to reduce health care costs;
* Strengthen the health care safety net;
* Provide a helping hand for working families and small businesses;
* Guarantee coverage for everyone; and
* Improve the quality and value of medical care.
to quote their Campaign for an American Solution website.
We need to understand that our opposition here is organized business, not just say Republicans. Republicans oppose meaningful health care reform but that is only incidental to the fact that they are serving organized business. Democrats prove that this is an artificial distinction when they reject proposals supported by maybe 50 or 60 percent of the population like Medicare-for-All.
We need to advocate for a long term vision also. This is really important. The Chamber of Commerce knows this: they are plotting a $100 million campaign not for any specific reform but rather just for general propaganda. Is anything comparable happening on the left? Not that I know of. We need to fight fire with fire.
I would argue that advocating mostly for a public plan (like say Daily Kos has lately) is short sighted. Rather we should simply advocate for a federally funded national health insurance system and then note the public plan as a second best. More broadly, to avoid being marginalized we will need to re-energize a US labor movement that is now very weak.