Not simply content to use their massive wealth to influence elections and lobby Congress, the country’s largest employers have joined together to block legislation ensuring working people’s right to vote.
The largest employer lobbying group in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently put out a “key vote alert” against the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1), the most significant federal voting rights bill since 1965. H.R. 1 would limit the influence of money in politics and prevent state legislatures from undermining American democracy by restricting the right to vote.
This, despite the fact that hundreds of CEOs and over a hundred corporations — including several whose executives serve on the Chamber’s board of directors — recently signed a two-page ad titled “We stand for democracy” that ran in the New York Times and the Washington Post last week.
Which are you going to believe? Corporations’ and CEOs’ public relations stunts or where they put their money?
(UE’s officers recently urged Congress to pass H.R. 1)