The U.S. Chamber of Commerce may have access to a shit ton of money, but they don't have the kind of membership support they like to claim.
For years, the US Chamber of Commerce overstated its membership numbers by a staggering 900 percent. After Mother Jones debunked its fuzzy math last fall, Washington's richest lobbying outfit downplayed its claim that it represented 3 million businesses, instead saying that it had a "direct membership" of 300,000 companies. But now it appears that even that number could be overblown by as much as 500 percent. If that's so, then the Chamber may have to revise its claim to be "the largest business trade association in the country."
The new numbers come from the union-backed group US Chamber Watch, which examined the Chamber's 2009 financial disclosures and concluded that it has fewer than 100,000 dues-paying members. Of those, just a handful contribute the vast majority of its annual budget....
So where did the Chamber get its current membership number from? Most likely from its Federation Partnership Program, in which small businesses that join local chambers of commerce are automatically enrolled in the US Chamber of Commerce free of charge. Local businesses often aren't aware that they're members of the US Chamber of Commerce, as I found when I asked green businesses that belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce why they belonged a national group that opposes caps on carbon emissions. After being contacted by several surprised members, the San Francisco Chamber dropped out of the partnership program. As of late 2009, 354 local chambers were participating in the partnership program, though only 17 chambers from the 100 largest cities were involved. Yet the Federation Partnership Program could still be large enough to give the Chamber a 200,000-member boost.
Because of its extremely visible role in the 2010 elections, and the millions it spent to buy a Republican Congress, a number of local chambers have distanced themselves from the U.S. Chamber. The Chamber might act as though it's invincible--and it certainly can wield plenty of influence in terms of money. But after this election, the mask of the Chamber as an honest broker just looking out for America's engine of business--large and small--has been stripped away.