The head of the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned scores of conservative House Republicans — who’ve attempted to thwart the GOP leadership’s agenda on issues like raising the debt limit, transportation, and funding the U.S. Export-Import bank — that they’re walking a fine line.
“There’s no questions the Republicans on the ex-im bank were, there were a lot of them who gave us something to think about,” Chamber CEO Tom Donohue told reporter at a Monday breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “We never go after a Republican or a Democrat for a vote….It’s across the board voting practice.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce typically backs Republicans, and even the most obstinate members will have a lot of leeway. As an illustration of that fact, Donohue gave his blessing to House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to use the need to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to force GOP-backed cuts to federal programs through Congress.
“I think that’s a great place to start. That’s how we got some things done before,” Donohue said. “I don’t think, considering what’s going on around the world, what’s going on in Greece and Spain and Italy and the United States, I don’t think defaulting on debt when you have three or four states that are in fact bankrupt is a very, very good idea, but I think it’s a damn good way to get people’s attention and to insist that we have some sort of an appropriate agreement on how we’re going to go forward on the spend side and eventually on the tax side.”
