OBAMA FOR USA
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has accepted an invitation to address the U.S. Chamber of Commerce early next month as the Obama administration and the biggest U.S. business lobby battle over a proposed financial regulatory overhaul.Emanuel will be the keynote speaker when the Chamber’s board of directors meets Nov. 4 at its headquarters in Washington. The group has led the charge against President Barack Obama’s proposal for an agency intended to shield consumers from lending abuses. It also has opposed the White House stance on energy development and combating climate change.
“We appreciate the Chamber reaching out to the White House,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “While we have big disagreements on issues like energy and financial regulatory reform, we want to work together on areas where there is agreement like creating jobs.”
While the Chamber opposes several of the president’s top domestic priorities, including aspects of his health-care overhaul and climate legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, White House officials point to coordinated efforts with the business group on Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan and education efforts concerning the H1N1 virus.
Singled Out
Obama has singled out the Chamber as one of the primary opponents of his regulatory overhaul plans, specifically creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
“Predictably, a lot of the banks and big financial firms don’t like the idea of a consumer agency very much,” Obama said Oct. 9. “In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending millions on an ad campaign to kill it.”
David Hirschmann, president of the Washington-based business group’s Center for Capital Markets, said this week that the proposal is flawed.
“After several rounds of revisions, this bill remains a complicated and confusing maze of unclear regulatory standards and ill-defined terms,â€
In a speech last night at a fundraiser for Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Obama criticized members of the financial industry for lobbying against his plan, while leaving out a direct reference to the Chamber.
Even with the opposition from the banking industry, business groups and Republicans, the proposed agency cleared its first test this week by winning approval in the House Financial Services Committee. The agency would be empowered to write and enforce rules against abuses in credit-card and mortgage lending.
Communications
The administration and the chamber have kept open communications. Elizabeth Vale, executive director of the White House Business Council, has met with or spoken to Chamber officials every month about policy, according to an administration official.
Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s chief liaison to the business community, last met with Chamber President Thomas Donohue shortly before the Washington-based group launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign in September against the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
In addition, Obama and administration officials including Jarrett and Emanuel have held closed meetings with individual corporate executives.
Jarrett and Emanuel had a private dinner earlier this month with the chief executive officers of Intel Corp., Time Warner Inc., Dow Chemical Co. and other corporations for a discussion on the economy and job creation. Obama invited business leaders including Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos and Kraft Foods Inc. CEO Irene Rosenfeld for a White House lunch Oct. 8 to get their views on the U.S. economy.
To contact the reporter on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington(Bloomberg)
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