Labor & Employment Law

Chamber Poll Makes Case for Stimulus Over Deficit Reduction

By James Parks

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce?s so-called Jobs Summit yesterday in Washington, D.C., produced little in the way of real solutions to our economic crisis. Instead, there were the usual complaints about regulation and taxes?it opposes both.

But the real news came from outside the summit, where a new poll commissioned by the Chamber unintentionally showed that its own members agree with the AFL-CIO and most progressives that the federal government should spend more money stimulating the economy rather than reducing the deficit?the direct opposite of the Chamber?s position. 

Writing in the New Republic, Jonathan Chait points out that in a poll conducted for the Chamber that only 45 percent of small business owners believe the government could improve the economy by spending less and reducing deficits. Chait writes:

Interesting! Small business owners are more conservative than the average American, but they’re also more economically literate than the average American. In this instance, the economic literacy is overwhelming the conservatism to make small business owners more pro-stimulus than the public as a whole. [The Heritage Foundation, which released the poll] concludes, ?Small business is the backbone of the U.S. economy, and those who keep those businesses running know better than anyone what they need to stay afloat.? So I guess that means we need to spend more and increase deficits, then.

Read Chait?s column here.

Also, yesterday, two aides to President Obama blasted the Chamber for saying the administration ?vilified? business and issued ?job-destroying regulations.? The charges were in a letter the Chamber sent to the White House as part of its jobs summit.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett responded with their own letter, saying weak regulation during the Bush administration led to the financial crisis that threw the economy into the worst decline since the 1930s.

In their letter to the Chamber, Emanuel and Jarrett wrote:

We will not, however, accept the lax regulation of the financial industry that led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. And we will not stand by while oil and gas companies continue to fight needed changes to outdated regulations that are partially responsible for one of the worst environmental crises in American history.

Well said.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on July 15, 2010 (boomark / email).