U.S. Chamber’s Assault on Financial Reform Serves CEOs, not Business

CtW report: Chamber CEO Tom Donohue has hijacked the Chamber’s agenda

October 15, 2009 --

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Preaching free enterprise, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue leads the Chamber’s attack on the financial reforms essential to restore employment and the economy. He cloaks the Chamber’s staunch opposition in the most expensive rhetoric money can buy. But Donohue’s pro-business, pro-economy and pro-jobs rhetoric notwithstanding, the Chamber’s record under his leadership is none of those things. It is pro-CEO.

That is the conclusion of a report released today by Change to Win entitled “Preaching Principle, Enabling Excess: How Tom Donohue Compromised the Credibility of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.” The report details how Tom Donohue has hijacked the Chamber’s agenda away from serving the interests of the business community to serving corporate CEOs.

The report is especially timely given yesterday’s launch of the Chamber’s “Campaign for Free Enterprise,” which will reportedly spend $100 million on advertising, lobbying and politics to promote the Chamber’s anti-reform agenda. Prior to the launch, Donohue assured his board that the Chamber had “enlisted some of the savviest communications and advertising experts in the country to develop persuasive arguments and powerful messages.”

Further compromising the Chamber’s credibility as a voice for American business is Donohue’s own complicity in enabling CEO excess as a director of four scandal-ridden, publicly-traded companies. As the report highlights, these corporations engaged in the very practices that highlight the need for reform. As a member (and in some instances chair) of the compensation committee of these boards, Donohue himself approved indefensibly high pay to executives, often in the face of illusory profits, and approved misdated stock options.

The complete report can be downloaded at http://www.changetowin.org/chamber.

Source: Change to Win