Paying the Costs of the Gulf Oil Spill: You, Probably

The news from the Gulf of Mexico continues to be bad. To date, all of British Petroleum’s (BP) attempts to stop the flow of oil from the leaking deep-water well have failed. As of now, 60,683 square miles of the Gulf are closed to commercial and recreational fishing. The tourism industry along the Gulf Coast is bracing for a poor summer season.

And then we hear from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which vows it will do everything in its power to be sure taxpayers, not BP, pick up the tab for most of the economic and environmental damage caused by BP’s oil spill.

Now, if you know anything at all about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, you know that the USCoC doesn’t like taxes. But it likes holding corporations accountable for their own messes even less.

You may be familiar with local chambers of commerce around the United States, which generally engage in beneficial civic boosterism. The national CoC is another critter entirely. It is a powerful lobbying group through which big corporations channel millions of dollars to be sure the government works for them but not for you.  These lobbyists work hard to weaken regulations and oversight agencies that hold corporations accountable. The CoC also is a big promoter of union busting and “tort reform,” the incredibly successful campaign to trick Americans into giving up their right to sue for damages. It also fought national health care reform.

So, as the ridiculously low $75 million liability cap for oil spills comes under scrutiny, USCoC head Tom Donohue was quick to speak up, according to ABC News.

“It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game,” said Tom Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “. . . Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that.”

It’s worth mentioning that Don L. Blankenship, who is Chairman, CEO and President of Massey Energy Company, is on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Massey Energy owns the West Virginia mine in which 29 coal miners died earlier this year.

In recent years the USCoC has turned its attention to what it calls the “crisis” in asbestos litigation. The Chamber acknowledges that workplace exposure to asbestos caused many people to develop mesothelioma and other diseases. But, it claims, mesothelioma is “disappearing from American hospitals.” (It isn’t; thousands of Americans die of mesothelioma every year.) The Chamber promotes capping damage awards, which somehow is supposed to protect the interests of mesothelioma victims who need the damage awards to care for themselves.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

In a nutshell, for several years the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has worked to be sure government does less and less on behalf of citizens but more and more on behalf of corporations. It has spent millions to elect politicians who support tax breaks and bloated no-bid contracts for big corporations, while cutting funds for education, health care, and other programs that more directly benefit the American people.

See also: Matt Stoller, “Tom Donahue, the ‘Gang of 6′ and Red America.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.