With last week’s passage of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, it seems that the ravaged political battlefield of financial reform has finally fallen silent.  But even in the aftermath of this historic piece of legislation, it’s important to remember to take a step back from the battle and see just who’s been trying to win the war.  And as last Thursday’s article in the Washington Post revealed, one group in particular seems intent on pressing onwards to the next grand fight, no matter the cost — literally.

After all, “Over the past year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent nearly $3 million a week in opposition to President Obama’s major agenda items, breaking all previous lobbying records.”  And while the Chamber has failed to stop “among other things, student-loan legislation, credit-card reforms and a landmark measure that expands workers’ rights to sue for equal pay,” the article notes that the Chamber has championed its work to put a damper on the cap-and-trade climate bill and subverted the development of the health-care reform bill by advocating against the possibility of a public insurance option.

But the Chamber hasn’t just broken lobbying records — they’re also a broken record, if the way they repeatedly justify their political interventions as representing “the business community” is any indication.  Some elements of this “business community,” of course, have other plans: the article goes on to list major businesses, including Nike and Apple, that would prefer to leave its board or quit the Chamber rather than be represented by a group that’s acted as “one of the leading combatants in the battle over health-care legislation,”  and  “has helped stall White House-backed legislation in the Senate that would require greater disclosure of political spending by corporations.”

Meanwhile, groups that represent small businesses, such as the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, would rather publicize their distance from their similarly named counterpart:

“We’re interested in what’s good for small business, and many times that’s not what’s good for big business.”

It’s important to keep statements like this in mind when the victories of the Chamber are described as “pro-business” or their failures as “anti-commerce”.  Instead, it seems clear that they prefer to be just one thing: pro-Chamber of Commerce.

And unfortunately for the body politic, it looks like being pro-Chamber of Commerce means being not just pro-Big Business, but also anti-reform.

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