The Chamber of Commerce is the largest business federation in the world, representing three million — million! — businesses across the United States. In fact, it’s likely you have a local chapter in your neck of the woods, representing local businesses and even sponsoring local events in my hometown.
The National Federation of Independent Business is another major business federation, representing small businesses in every state and the nation’s capital. While it’s smaller than the Chamber of Commerce, the NFIB is still able to claim hundreds of thousands of members.
It sounds like these two organizations would be ideal attendees for a meeting on how to create jobs, right? I mean, who better to provide input on job creation than organizations that represent millions of businesses across the United States? They can speak on what their members need in order to start hiring once again.
And yet neither one has been invited to the White House jobs summit. Union bosses and corporate CEOs will be in attendance, but neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the National Federal of Independent Business received an invitation.
WASHINGTON — President Obama is hosting a jobs summit at the White House on Thursday, inviting corporate CEOs and union chiefs to participate in a forum on accelerating job creation, but two major business groups have been left of the guest list.
Both the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business were not invited to share their ideas at the event featuring 133 guests.
Both groups oppose the cap and trade climate change legislation on Capitol Hill as well as the Democrats’ health care reform proposals, which led to a public dispute between the USCC and the administration earlier this fall.
In other words, they oppose legislation that independent and even official studies have already shown will seriously harm the economy and increase the national deficit. They take the position of most American citizens, let alone businesses, and believe in free market ideals. So the liberal Democrats in Washington aren’t interested in what they have to say.
These groups represent millions of American businesses and would be considered experts on job creation. And yet they weren’t invited because they dared to come out against two pieces of massive government legislation that a majority of Americans also happen to oppose.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment, apparently realizing it’s been caught utilizing an enemies list.
3. December 2009 at 12:07 pm
Another public deception right out of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”. The Chamber of Commerce and NFIB need to have someone on their staffs intimately familiar with “Rules for Radicals” – and be prepared to respond accordingly with counter actions – so long as this administration is in power. They deliberately don’t play “fair” for there is always a hidden agenda. The business summit will look good and be sold to the public through the mainstream media as producing an agreed course of action upon which everyone agrees, i.e., upon which there is a clear consensus, when nothing could be further from the truth. The Chamber and NFIB need to “scream” to “high hell” about it and keep on screaming – pointing out that there is anything BUT a consensus – that the summit was a setup. I, unfortunately, can do nothing more than submit this comment.