The U.S. Chamber in the news - August 30

Romney’s Dodd-Frank Kill Pledge Collides With Wall Street Agenda

The hit list also includes the consumer bureau, a regulator whose potential independence and power drew opposition as Dodd- Frank was being drafted from an array of interests, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Dimon, JPMorgan’s chairman and chief executive officer. Dimon, in a 2011 letter to shareholders, said the bureau, which is housed within the Federal Reserve but maintains its independence, needed to be “effective for both consumers and banks.”

Dems hoping to make minimum wage hike a campaign issue

An official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called a minimum wage increase “a typical election-year ploy.”

“This is a typical election-year ploy by some to make it appear as though they're supporting low-income workers,” said Marc Freedman, the Chamber’s executive director of labor law policy, in a statement.
 
“But the reality is that the small businesses who would bear the brunt of this increase operate on very tight cash flows and would have to find more revenue from some source to cover these increases. These are the businesses on whom we are relying to turn around the economy, and arbitrarily increasing their labor costs is not a prescription for job growth.”

Sharp Elbows Among Street Lawmen

The budding rivalries and partnerships between these lawmen are making corporations, along with New York's local industry, Wall Street, nervous. Corporate and financial executives and their advocates fear an arms race of prosecution, driven by ambition and the public's desire to blame the business community for the financial crisis.

"It highlights a vicious cycle we've seen since [former Attorney General Eliot] Spitzer, where financial regulators are competing more for headlines than ensuring that our markets are competitive," said Tom Quaadman, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.

US Chamber Of Commerce Launches Ad Campaign For Son Of SOPA

Next to the MPAA, the main lobbying organization that pushed SOPA was the US Chamber of Commerce. The organization and its laughably inept “Global Intellectual Property Center” are infamous for the fact that they have absolutely no shame in using completely bogus numbers to argue for bad laws that their highest spending backers support. Not surprisingly, the USCoC did not take the loss over SOPA lightly, and it appears that they’re gearing up for the next version of SOPA in 2013. As pointed out by Gautham Nagesh, the USCoC has kicked off a new ad campaign priming the pump for new legislation to “protect intellectual property.”

In other words: get ready for “son of SOPA.”

FCPA Guidance to Be Released by October

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has paid for a high-profile lobbying campaign to advocate on Capitol Hill to change the law, and has enlisted 30 trade groups to its cause. Among other things, the Chamber wants an affirmative defense created under the FCPA for companies with robust compliance programs and a narrower definition of who qualifies as a foreign official.

The US Chamber of Commerce's Multimillion-Dollar Attack Plan

If you live in a state where a competitive race could help tip the balance in the Senate this fall, you’ve almost certainly seen ads like these, laden with menacing theme music, light on the facts and funded by the US Chamber of Commerce. The nation’s largest business lobby is showcasing bold ambitions this year in an effort to build on gains made in the 2010 midterms, when at least $33 million of Chamber advertising helped push the nation dramatically rightward. The group began placing ads in swing districts as early as November 2011. Since then, it has rolled out a campaign aimed at influencing at least fifty House and eight Senate races, and according to Politico it has set a goal of $100 million in spending for this electoral cycle.