Big business players such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are “getting very close and cozy with big government,” The Foundry’s Genevieve Wood said last night in an interview with Lou Dobbs of Fox Business News. The loser, she said, is “the little guy.”
“You’ve got more big government and it’s not overly surprising that you’ve got big business — which can afford it and work with it so to speak — coming out and supporting it,” Wood, senior contributor to The Foundry, said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” Wood added:
“You can’t talk about free enterprise and the free market and be for corporate welfare, giving subsidies – whether its green energy companies or Boeing or you name the big business out there … There are things that the chamber and other business groups certainly do right – they’re for [the] Keystone [XL pipeline] for instance – but there’s a lot of things they do that … they’re getting very close and cozy with big government.”
Pointing to a recent op-ed for the McClatchy-Tribune wire service in which Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue cited Americans’ lack of interest in low-skill jobs as a reason for Congress to grant amnesty for illegal immigrants, Dobbs asked Wood to comment on evidence that big business is going in a different direction than most conservatives.
“It’s increasingly the establishment position, the big business position that the chamber is putting forth,” Wood said, adding that amnesty for illegal immigrants is the central aspect of the Senate-passed bill supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and other lobbyist groups, and labor unions:
“And I’m sorry, it’s hard to say how that is good for the American taxpayer, who’s going to pay trillions of dollars if we do something like that. And it’s certainly not going to secure our borders. We’ve been down this path before. So a lot of us can say, including those of us at The Heritage Foundation: Yes, we need immigration reform, but you don’t go about it with an amnesty bill. And that’s what the chamber wants to do. They’re willing to take that route because they think it will be good for some of their businesses even though it runs over the American taxpayer — and frankly, our country’s rule of law.”
Dobbs identified Obamacare, corporate welfare and the Internet sales tax and net neutrality as other issues where big business interests aren’t in line with conservative principles.
When Dobbs said he detects “a merger of corporate interest with the Democratic Party that I’ve never seen the like of,” Wood stressed that “big business and the establishment” have allies in the Republican Party too. This chumminess with big government is the subject of her latest Foundry column, she noted.
“I’ll tell you why I think it happens,” Wood said of this inclination by big business players. “They, unlike the individual citizen or the small business owner or entrepreneur, they can afford all the record keepers and lobbyists and tax accountants and lawyers that it takes to keep up with the new regulations and mandates that come with things like Obamacare. And what does that do? It means they end up being the only people in the market. It pushes the little guy out.”
This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.
