Challenging the U.S. Chamber

The nonprofit, membership-driven South Carolina Small Business Chamber will officially be supporting an IRS complaint against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

We, along with other business organizations, are questioning potential violations of exemptions under the federal tax law in the U.S. Chamber’s conduct of lobbying and campaign funding. More on this later.

Below is a must-read New York Times story about the U.S. Chamber. If you have not been paying attention to the U.S. Chamber’s heavily financed legislative agenda and how it often is at odds with our agenda, this story should help bring you up to speed.
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The New York Times
October 22, 2010

Top Corporations Aid U.S. Chamber of Commerce Campaign

By ERIC LIPTON, MIKE McINTIRE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.

And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has been critical of growing federal regulation and spending. These large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group that keeps its donors secret, as it is allowed by law — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.

They suggest that the recent allegations from President Obama and others that foreign money has ended up in the chamber’s coffers miss a larger point: The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help. . . . Keep reading

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Join the SC Small Business Chamber in supporting our independent, locally owned hardware stores next month:

Buy SC's Happy Hardware Day!!
Saturday, Nov. 20, 2010
Shop at independent, locally owned hardware stores to show your support for SC small business! 

Gubernatorial Endorsement?

"Are you going to come out in support of Vincent Sheheen?"

That was the question raised to me yesterday in a telephone call from a friend. After all, the State Chamber re-upped on their Sheheen endorsement this week.

“No,” I said, “the Small Business Chamber doesn’t endorse candidates.”

That has been our position since I co-founded the organization ten years ago.

That policy has served us well over the years. While we side with or against elected officials on particular issues, we try to keep our efforts issue-oriented and not make permanent enemies. Well, unless it becomes obvious that the public official has absolutely no interest in our positions or having a positive relationship.

That’s eventually what happened with Governor Sanford. After he was first elected, we tried very hard to forge a positive relationship with his office. But after a few years, it became clear that Sanford had no real interest either in working with us or in taking on any initiatives to really help small business. The gloves were off from then on. But our organization still didn’t endorse his re-election opponent.

Did we make a mistake then and are we making a mistake now? I don’t think so. But we probably should have done more to check how Sanford voted in Congress, put him on the record with questions and then informed the small business community of what we found out before he was first elected Governor.

So that’s what we are going to do with both Vincent Sheheen and Nikki Haley. That is what the small businesses of this state deserve—to be informed by an organization fighting for their best interest every day. That’s what we do because we are "The Advocate of South Carolina Small Business".