October 31st, the one day a year that children and adults alike don costumes and take to the streets for free candy. For the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, Halloween seems to be celebrated daily. Whether it’s dressing up as the voice for small business, or “ghost” writing some scary legislation, the Chamber can always be counted on to masquerade as something it’s not. If you’ve followed our series up until this point, you’re well educated in just how frightening the Chamber of Commerce can be. On the off chance you haven’t followed our series and we’re just now meeting you, allow us to give you a Halloween crash course on the very scariest components of the Chamber.
There are few things more frightening than losing access to high-quality affordable health care. Got a “boo” boo? Tough luck, says the Chamber! Since the beginning of the debate around passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Chamber has worked to undermine efforts to expand access to healthcare for tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans. In just 15 months between 2009 and 2010, the Chamber spent more than $102 million dollars, funneled to it by the big health insurers, on opposing the ACA. In 2017, we watched as the Chamber lobbied Congress to pass the American Health Care Act (AHCA) which would have repealed the ACA, and it spent more than $16 million between 2012 and 2016 supporting the campaigns of ten of the 13 senators authoring the bill.
Just as scary as losing health insurance? Resurrecting a deregulated state from the grave. The Chamber has spent the past several months pushing Trump and the GOP congress to revoke a slew of Obama-era rules protecting consumers, workers, and the environment, including pushing to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, which helps to limit Wall Street’s penchant for casino capitalism. The Chamber has lobbied fiercely for passage of the Financial CHOICE Act, a sweeping Wall Street deregulation bill that would undo much of Dodd-Frank. Among other things, the CHOICE Act would repeal the Volcker Rule, a piece of legislation that ensures that banks refrain from engaging in speculative proprietary trading with investors’ money, thereby reducing the risk of another financial crisis. The Chamber’s latest crusade has been stripping defrauded consumers and small businesses from their right to band together to sue corporations, such as Wells Fargo and Equifax. The Chamber lobbied for the repeal of the CFPB’s forced arbitration rule, and unfortunately, earlier this week the Chamber and its Wall Street allies were successful in killing this important consumer protection rule.
Bobbing for apples this year? Enjoy them (that is, apples and clean water) while you can. When it comes to the environment, the Chamber has proven time and time again that it has little regard for planet Earth. The Chamber has been a longtime critic of the Paris climate agreement. It even paid for the debunked “study” Trump used to justify withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The Chamber has been a leading opponent of other actions to mitigate climate change, such as suing to block Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would reduce carbon emissions at power plants. But the Chamber’s anti-environmental litigation isn’t just limited to attempting to block the Clean Power Plan. Between 2013 and 2016, the Chamber opposed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in court 26 times. Given its decades-long history of doing the dirty work on behalf of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, it comes as no surprise that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also pushing hard for repeal of the clean water rule, also known as the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, which increases protections for the nation’s waterways.
Hoping to put on your finest Mad Men attire for Halloween 2k17? Don’t bother! Just head on over to the Chamber where you can see antiquated workplace policies stacked against women in action! The Chamber has been hard at work keeping women from achieving equity in the workplace since the 1960s, opposing workplace policies for women relating to equal pay, pregnancy, and medical leave. In 1977 the Chamber lobbied against amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover women from discrimination due to pregnancy. Just a year later, in 1978, the Chamber used the argument that pregnancy is a “voluntary” condition in its opposition to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Unfortunately, that’s not all. They’ve also lobbied against the Family and Medical Leave Act saying it would set a “dangerous precedent of federally mandated employee benefits,” as well as President Clinton’s push for equal pay in 1998, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and in 2009, the Chamber went so far as to lobby against legislation that would allow rape victims to bring lawsuits against their employers. In both 2014 and 2015, the Chamber opposed to the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation that would address the pay gap by requiring companies to justify pay discrepancies based on legitimate factors such as education, training, and experience.
If taking away healthcare, destroying public protections, and restricting women’s’ rights aren’t enough to spook you, we’re not sure what will! While we can’t say when the Chamber’s Little Shop of Horrors will finally come to an end, we can say we’ll work to expose them in the meantime.
Happy Halloween from Chamber Watch!
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