In strident speech in Washington this morning, US Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue renewed his assault on the Obama agenda and pledged to fight the President’s allies in the 2010 elections. The Chamber will wage “the largest, most aggressive” campaign in it’s 100-year history, he said, to “highlight lawmakers and candidates who support a pro-jobs agenda, and hold accountable those who don’t.”
Lashing out out at Democrats’ leading initiatives, Donohue called health care legislation pending in Congress “a prescription for fiscal insolvency and eventual government takeover of American health care.” And he said the Waxman-Markey climate bill “would tie economic activity in knots and eliminate jobs from one end of the country to another.”
As I reported in Mother Jones‘ January/February issue, the Chamber of Commerce’s image as the voice of American businesss is increasingly at odds with it’s right-wing political agenda and undemocratic leadership structure. Greenwire recently reported that a third of the Chamber’s massive budget–it spends upwards of $300,000 per day on lobbying–comes from a mere 19 supporters (it has long refused to name its backers or members). “People have criticized us for helping industries or individual companies,” Donohue told the Wall Street Journal last year. “What the hell do you think we do? That’s our business!”