Politics/ The Politics of Business
Norquist, Grover G.
The Politics of Business by Grover G. Norquist 0 n April 5, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fired senior vice president Bill Archey. Archey, an architect of business community collaboration with the...
...Free-market congressmen and staffers point to five reasons for this political failure...
...Following Archey's dismissal, the Chamber repudiated its previous statements in support of a government mandate that all employers provide health insurance and stated its strong opposition to the Clinton health-care plan, even as a starting point for debate on health-care reform...
...Boehner and colleagues Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, and Chris Cox alerted hundreds of state and local chambers...
...Labor PACs, less inclined to be bipartisan, gave 94 percent to Democrats and only 6 percent to Republicans...
...Chamber of Commerce, had not even met Phyllis Schlafly until 1984...
...Business muscle, however, has not translated into political strength...
...This multi-faceted one-year campaign resulted in Archey's firing and the resignation of Robert Patricelli, the board member who most strongly supported mandates...
...to small business by taxes, mandates, and regulations...
...In early 1993, word went out from the Democratic National Committee that any Democrat who provided serious opposition to the The American Spectator July 1994 55 Clinton health plan would be kept off all Democratic campaign work now and in the future...
...Chamber and the National Federation of Independent Business annual meetings...
...L ike Marxists worldwide, the American left always had an exaggerated view of the political power of American business...
...desirable, because of competition from other business groups and criticism from members, directors, and congressional allies...
...Similarly, the reason to close down the Small Business Administration is not simply to save taxpayers $300 million, but to redirect the effort some small firms put into chasing after government largesse into the larger fight against taxes and regulations...
...Fourteen percent would let at least one employee go and 13 percent would go out of business...
...In Kerrigan's view, Clinton knows full well the damage done...
...As Karen Kerrigan points out, "There is no role for small business in Bill Clinton's vision ofthe future...
...Twenty–six percent postponed planned expansion and 28 percent raised prices...
...If Dick Armey is ever successful in cutting off agricultural subsidies, three million fanners will be liberated to become a tremendous lobby against higher taxes and regulations...
...Republicans boycotted a Chamber awards event...
...Worst of all, small business groups are too easily bought off in fights over mandates, regulations, and taxes by exemptions for businesses with fewer than, say, 100 employees...
...He personally lobbied Saudi Arabia to buy American planes...
...Fully 14 percent said they'd laid off at least one worker...
...In fact, recent trends suggest that business is becoming a stronger free-market voice, thanks in part to the efforts of a group of Republican congressmen determined to act as a counterweight to Democratic pressure...
...But it usually works the other way around...
...When the U.S...
...The administration's fifteen–month siege of the Chamber has apparently been lifted, marking an important milestone in the Clinton presidency...
...On May 11, Kerrigan released a survey by the Luntz Research Companies that asked 500 small businesses how they responded to the 1993 tax hikes...
...America has more businesses than it has union members...
...Third, the business community allows itself to be divided...
...These are no longer the 1950s and 60s, when fights between business and labor were relatively honest, in that each had an interest in a growing economy...
...The American Gas Association doesn't object to gasoline taxes...
...Tony Coelho urged Democratic colleagues to boycott the Chamber's television shows in protest against the Chamber's endorsement of pro-business Republicans...
...Yet just as Clinton's health-care scheme is based on European models, so too is Clinton's vision of the proper relationship between the government and large corporations...
...The nation's largest business association has decided that it is now safe, desirable, and necessary to oppose Clintonism: safe, because of Clinton's political weakness...
...In the 1991-92 electoral cycle, business PACs contributed $127 million, compared to the $43 million raised and spent by ,union PACs...
...In the U.S...
...Business PACs spend only 8 percent of their donations on challengers and 12 percent on open seats...
...When the Chamber last fall sent up testimony to the Hill in support of mandated insurance benefits, Boehner organized a phone and mail blitz to the Chamber board of directors and local chambers...
...He's met with more Fortune 500 CEOs than either Bush or Reagan did...
...Joe O'Neill, a former staffer for Lloyd Bentsen hired by the American [now National] Retail Federation, was supposed to influence this key Democrat on the Finance Committee...
...There are today scores of former Democratic staffers going through the motions of opposing Clinton while deliberately failing to defend the interests of their corporate employers...
...Since there are five million small firms that employ workers, this translates to a minimum of 700,000 jobs destroyed by the 1993 Clinton tax hike...
...John Boehner, began a year–long campaign to turn the Chamber around...
...Conservative activist' and Loctite Corporation founder Bob Krieble funded two hour–long shows on the Chamber for National Empowerment Television...
...When Clinton saw that the CEOs of America weren't buying, he ordered the White House to work directly with the more pliable companies' Washington lobbyists—many of them former Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill...
...She also alerted 500 radio talk shows and spent a month speaking to radio audiences about the threat the Chamber-backed mandate posed to small businesses...
...The Chamber's leftward drive, incidentally, was not a matter of Archey acting alone...
...Today's business world faces unions made up of Clintonite government workers and Al Gore's environmental activists, people who would like nothing better than seeing certain industries—tobacco, lead, grazing, and mining—driven ouf of business...
...Influence is being in the room when the politicians decide to raise taxes on your industry and thanks to your large contributions to the committee chairman and his friends on the committee your taxes will increase by only half as much...
...A nother welcome trend is the radicalization of the small business community—a direct result of the Clintons' unbridled contempt for the independent small businessman...
...In April, when Clinton's approval/disapproval rating among the general public was a relatively high 51-42, a Gallup survey for Forbes magazine found that 75 percent of leading CEOs disapprove of Clinton's performance and only 21 percent approve...
...Solidarity between large and small businesses would have stopped a lot of bad legislation in its tracks...
...A business community facing such uncompromising enemies will either learn to gain and wield political power or lose everything...
...Archey, an architect of business community collaboration with the Clinton administration, had come to personify the U.S...
...His IRS is trying to force self-employed consultants to become full-time employees of other firms," Kerrigan says, pointing to one concrete way in which Clinton views small businessmen as "class enemies to be crushed...
...In his first year he addressed the U.S...
...T he situation is not hopeless...
...Because small businesses are independent and want nothing from government other than to be left alone, Clinton has no use for them and wants fewer of them around come 1996...
...Patricelli was also president of an HMO group that stood to benefit from the Clinton proposal...
...today there are more than 18 million businesses, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, farms, and small firms...
...First, business leaders too often confuse access and influence with power...
...Even the leaders of large companies are becoming alarmed at Clinton's anti-business policies...
...would certainly change the balance of political power in America by capturing, or at least neutralizing, American business, long presumed to be a conservative or at least Republican bastion...
...Second, in their shortsighted quest for access, trade associations and corporations often hire Democratic Capitol Hill staffers to represent their interests in Washington...
...It was not an implausible theory...
...In their view, the capitalists had all the money and property and since political power necessarily flows from economic power, America must be run by and for corporate interests...
...In fact, in the 1991-92 election cycle, business PACs gave more of their money to Democrats (53 percent) than to Republicans (47 percent...
...In recent years alone, business lost on a number of issues—the Clean Air Act, quotas, the Americans With Disabilities Act, mandated family leave, minimum wage increases—that slow the economy and will cost billions...
...The spirits industry doesn't oppose higher taxes on beer and wine...
...But one leading lobbyist for the car companies said openly, "I would rather lose that than win with 'those folks.' " Dick Lesher, the president of the U.S...
...There is only big government and friendly, tame, subsidized, and regulated big companies...
...Access means that if your PAC contributes to a politician he will allow you to drop by and visit while you are in Washington...
...One of the videos, featuring Krieble and former Chamber chief economist Richard Rahn, was mailed out to state and local chambers...
...Chamber's abandonment of free market principles for "pragmatism" and "being in the room when the decisions are made...
...Fourth, business fails to build coalitions with outside groups...
...While business PAC spending is three times greater than labor's, fully 79 percent of business PAC contributions go to incumbents to buy access or protection...
...Chamber endorsed the Clinton budget., in February 1993, the Conservative Opportunity Society, the caucus of activist Republicans led by Ohio Rep...
...When the government wanted to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that forced cars to be smaller to get higher gas mileage, the strongest opposition came from pro–family groups that wanted large cars for their families...
...necessary, because of the radicalism of Clinton's policies and appointees...
...Instead, in 1988, when other business groups asked the Retail Federation to help them fight the value-added tax, the federation declined: Bentsen was running for vice president and O'Neill didn't want any anti–tax efforts to embarrass the Democratic ticket...
...The thinking is that the former staffer will open doors to his ex-boss...
...Chamber, but that Republican congressmen finally joined the fray...
...Business must understand the premium Democrats place on party loyalty...
...With fewer resources than most Fortune 500 companies spend on their Washington office annually (to lose gracefully) Schlafly had defeated the entire establishment drive for the Equal Rights Amendment . Fifth, any industry that benefits from one government program can be cross–pressured into neutrality or even support for bad policy elsewhere...
...The partnership he envisions Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...The late California assembly speaker Jesse Unruh distilled the contempt politicians have for those who buy access when he said, "If you can't take their money, screw their women, and still vote against them, you don't belong in this business...
...The Small Business Survival Committee, led by veteran conservative activist Karen Kerrigan, sent an anti-mandate letter from previous Chamber chairmen of the board to the current Chamber board...
...As early as 1983 Democrats began a campaign to intimidate and neutralize the Chamber...
...Labor unions spend only 64 percent on incumbents and 18 percent on challengers and 19 percent on open seats...
...Power is the ability to defeat elected politicians...
...A second question asked how the 500 small firms would respond to a health-care mandate...
...Since his election, Clinton has worked hard to court business...
...What was remarkable about 1993 was not that politicians were lobbying the U.S...
...In politics, only power matters...
...56 The American Spectator July 1994...
Vol. 27 • July 1994 • No. 7
