Released October 15, 2009, "Preaching Principle, Enabling Excess: How Tom Donohue Compromised the Credibility of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce" is a new report from Change to Win. Download the complete report or executive summary in Adobe PDF format.

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Preaching free enterprise, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue leads the Chamber's attack on the financial reforms essential to restore employment and the economy.  He cloaks the Chamber's staunch opposition in the most expensive rhetoric money can buy.  But Donohue's pro-business, pro-economy and pro-jobs rhetoric notwithstanding, the Chamber's record under his leadership is none of those things.  It is pro-CEO.

Specifically, Tom Donohue has hijacked the Chamber's agenda away from serving the interests of the business community to serving corporate CEOs.  Under his direction, the Chamber now rewards corporations that write large checks with specific lobbying on their behalf.  Donohue's Chamber also expends significant resources defending CEOs whose conduct harms their own corporations as well as the business community. 

Under his leadership, the Chamber:

• Opposes regulating the markets, products and practices that generated massive payouts to Wall Street executives, but ultimately devastated their companies and caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
• Fights reforms that would make executive compensation more transparent, financial statements more reliable and accounting fraud more difficult to conceal.
• Attacks the ability of government agencies to investigate and hold accountable executives who may have engaged in wrongdoing.
• Defends executives accused or convicted of breaking the law, including ousted AIG head Hank Greenberg, who contributed $24.5 million to the Chamber; ex-Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio who is serving six years for insider trading that took place while Donohue was a Qwest director; and billionaire Philip Anschutz, perhaps Donohue's closest ally.

These activities are not in the interests of either the small businesses that make up 96% of the Chamber's members or American business generally.   Rather, they are nothing more than attempts to defend discredited practices that enable executives to enrich themselves at shareholders' expense.

Donohue's Complicity as a Corporate Director

Further compromising the Chamber's credibility as a voice for American business is Donohue's own complicity in enabling CEO excess as a director of four scandal-ridden, publicly-traded companies: Sunrise Senior Living, Union Pacific, Qwest Communications (until 2005) and XM Satellite Radio (until 2008).  During his tenure, these corporations engaged in the very practices that highlight the need for reform.

As a member (and in some instances chair) of the compensation committee of these boards, Donohue himself has approved indefensibly high pay to executives, often in the face of illusory profits based on improper accounting, and approved misdated stock options.

Donohue has been handsomely rewarded for his tenure at each company, including stock option grants with questionable dates.  In total, he has made an estimated $8 million as a corporate director of the four companies, even as long-term shareholders at three of the companies suffered huge losses.

Learn more: download the complete report.