Corporate Lobbying

Will Corporate Cash be Allowed to Overwhelm Elections?

nast moneybag2 If the United States were a country truly committed to democracy, we would now be having a national discussion on limiting the role of big money in politics. After all, we are still recovering from a financial crisis brought on by an orgy of deregulation instigated by Wall Street interests that spent lavishly to influence members of Congress from both major parties and then had to be bailed out by taxpayers. Major auto companies such as General Motors, which for years successfully lobbied to weaken fuel-economy standards, also had to be bailed out when they could no longer sell gas-guzzling SUVs.

Instead, the role of corporate money is stronger than ever. Rather than having the decency of withdrawing from the policy arena, bailed-out companies have continued to lobby for weaker regulation. At the same time, the insurance industry has thrown a monkey wrench into long-overdue healthcare reform by making hefty contributions to conservative Democrats. The energy industry used its resources to weaken the climate bill.

And now the U.S. Supreme Court may be preparing to open the floodgates completely. In June the high court took the unusual step of announcing it would hold a special hearing this September on a case involving a rightwing advocacy group, Citizens United, which ran afoul of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in connection with its distribution of a film attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton during the last presidential campaign. Instead of ruling narrowly on the case, which involves some of the technicalities of McCain-Feingold, the Court signaled that it wanted to reconsider the entire question of corporate political spending. Direct corporate contributions to federal campaign were first banned in 1907, and independent campaign expenditures by business corporations were prohibited in 1947.

There is little doubt that this unusual move was promoted by conservative justices such as Scalia and Thomas who think that any restrictions on corporate electoral spending are violations of the First Amendment. And it is no surprise that pro-business groups are generally praising the Court for taking on the issue, conveniently discarding their usual disdain for judicial activism.

Meanwhile, progressive watchdog groups such as Public Citizen are sounding the alarm, warning that eliminating limits on corporate spending would allow large companies to use their resources to buy elections with impunity.

The cynical way of looking at this is that Big Business already manages to dominate the electoral system through its political action committees and lobbying expenditures, so uncontrolled spending would not make much difference. The danger, however, is that eliminating the restrictions would allow capital to completely overwhelm the electoral system. And it would be a huge boon for the destructive principle of corporate personhood, the basis on which business interests exercise such outsized influence over American life.

What makes this issue trickier is that the cases in question deal not only with political expenditures by business corporations but also ones made by labor unions and non-profit corporations. Unfortunately, there is a long legal tradition of treating democratic organizations such as unions as equivalent to business corporations, which are undemocratic entities that should have no constitutional rights.

That is not going to change anytime soon. Meanwhile, we can only hope that reason prevails and the Supreme Court does not turn the electoral system into a total financial free-for-all.

Fighting Dirty on Healthcare Reform

gangs You’ve got to hand it to the health insurance corporations and their front groups for knowing how to play hardball. To protect the interests of the industry, they have been willing to spread outlandish allegations about euthanasia, gambling that the ensuing uproar will force nervous Dems to dilute their plan.

It remains to be seen whether the streetfighters ultimately prevail, but for now they have succeeded in reframing the debate. The country has been talking about pulling the plug on grandma when we should be discussing pulling the plug on the likes of Aetna, Cigna and Humana.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress have ruled out euthanizing the for-profit health insurance, leaving us with the alternative of a public plan that would compete with the commercial carriers and supposedly “keep them honest,” as Obama likes to put it.

Since the industry doesn’t seem interested in becoming virtuous, it has instead encouraged opposition to the public option. Apart from whatever behind-the-scenes role it has played in the town hall disruptions carried out by the rightwing lunatic fringe, the major insurers are cultivating the fifth column that is undermining the public option from within the Democratic Party. It’s widely known that members of the Blue Dog Coalition have been showered with campaign contributions from the industry. A recent Business Week cover story entitled “The Health Insurers Have Already Won” details other ways the big insurers have cozied up to and co-opted conservative Dems.

I’ve already written about the suspicious role the Lewin Group, owned by UnitedHealth Group but purportedly editorially independent, has played in the reform debate. Business Week describes how UnitedHealth itself feeds self-serving data to “information-starved congressional staff members.” The magazine depicts an especially close relationship between the company and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who “echoes UnitedHealth’s contention that a so-called public option could be a ‘Trojan horse for a single-payer system.'”

The infatuation of Warner and some other Dems with UnitedHealth is all the more baffling in light of the controversy over the company’s Golden Rule Insurance subsidiary, which has repeatedly been fined by state regulators for deceptive practices. Golden Rule was one of the companies singled-out in a recent House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on abuses in the individual health insurance market.

Business Week reports that the health insurers consider the battle against the public option already won and are now focusing on shaping the terms under which they will be providing new subsidized coverage. They are, the magazine says, pursuing the “aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured.”

How long will it be before Obama, having abandoned the public option, finds himself pressured by the health insurers and their surrogates to give ground on other aspects of the reform plan, such as the elimination of lifetime benefit caps? Or the prohibition on denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions?

The insurance reform effort will continue its slide toward irrelevance until Obama recognizes that he is engaged not in a boxing match with Marquis of Queensberry rules but rather a knife fight in which anything goes.

Corporate Lobbying Goes from Fake to Fraud

bonner As the Yes Men have shown with their impersonations, misrepresentation is sometimes the best way to convey a larger truth. That same lesson has been demonstrated, albeit unintentionally, by the lobbying firm Bonner & Associates, which was just exposed as having forged letters from non-profit organizations to members of Congress expressing opposition to the climate bill. In this case, the larger truth is that much of the support that corporate interests claim for their policy positions is bogus.

The story came to light thanks to the Charlottesville (Virginia) Daily Progress, which revealed that the office of Rep. Tom Perriello had received letters urging him to vote against the climate bill from two local civil rights organizations–Creciendo Juntos and the Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the NAACP–that were discovered to be forgeries. Additional faked letters were later reported by two other members of Congress.

Soon it was revealed that the letters had been sent out by Bonner, which had been hired by Hawthorn Group to help in its work on behalf of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a major coal industry front group. Bonner, which specializes in fabricating what it calls “strategic grassroots/grasstops” campaigns for large corporations, apologized for the phony letters but insisted they were the work of a rogue employee who has been terminated. This has not prevented a firestorm of criticism and calls from the likes of MoveOn.org and the Sierra Club for a Justice Department investigation of the matter.

Environmental groups are entitled to their righteous indignation, but some of this is akin to expressing shock that gambling is taking place in Casablanca. The entire point of the Astroturf work done by the likes of Bonner is to be deceptive–to give the misleading impression that there is a groundswell of support for the policy positions of big business.

The Bonner firm, founded in 1984 by former Congressional aide Jack Bonner (photo), made its name creating bogus campaigns on behalf of clients such as the banking industry (to fight proposals to lower permissible interest rates on credit cards) and the auto industry (to fight stricter fuel efficiency standards). In 1997 Ken Silverstein wrote a piece in Mother Jones describing Bonner as “a leader in the growing field of fake grassroots” lobbying.

In other words, Bonner is in the business of generating communications to members of Congress that are “real” messages from fake organizations. The current case involves fake messages from real organizations. It’s too soon to tell whether this represents a new tactic by the firm or an employee simply got confused about which aspects of the messages are supposed to be bogus. But either way, firms such as Bonner are helping large corporations co-opt political discourse.

Even more ominous are the supposedly spontaneous disruptions of town hall meetings being held by members of Congress. These confrontations are being carried out by rightwing opponents of healthcare reform–such as the group FreedomWorks–serving the interests of the for-profit medical establishment. It is bad enough when agents of business try to manipulate “civilized” communication with members of Congress; it is much worse when they begin to act like storm troopers trying to intimidate elected officials from diverging from the corporate line.

An Independent Corporate Front Group?

sheils Would a consulting company owned by Exxon be considered an impartial source of analysis on global warming, or would such a firm owned by Xe (formerly Blackwater) be regarded as a good judge of federal policy on the use of mercenaries? Probably not; in fact, they would, in all likelihood, be seen as front groups for the interests of their corporate parents.

Then how is it that one of the most influential consulting firms on healthcare policy is the Lewin Group, which is owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the largest of the for-profit medical insurance corporations and thus a very interested party when it comes to the current deliberations in Congress on major healthcare reform?

Lewin claims to be “objective” and “impartial,” but some of its analysis is repeatedly being used in very partisan ways by Republican members of Congress (such as John Boehner and Orin Hatch) and conservative commentators (the Heritage Foundation and Rich Lowry of National Review) to attack the idea of a public option in legislation that would seek to provide coverage to the uninsured. They typically do not mention Lewin’s relationship to UnitedHealth, which will benefit greatly if the public option is eliminated.

Those seeking to shield for-profit insurers from a competing federal plan are trumpeting Lewin research purporting to show that the existence of at least some versions of a public option would result in a mass exodus from employer-provided plans with higher premiums. Lewin claims that some 119 million of the 171 million people covered by employer plans could migrate to Uncle Sam’s offering. Given the assumption that taxpayers will be subsidizing participants in the public plan, such a shift is seen as creating a fiscal disaster for the federal government and the collapse of private plans. The rabidly pro-corporate group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights uses the Lewin research in a TV ad that depicts a public plan as a bulldozer that could “crush all your other choices, driving them out of existence.”

Lewin insists that it has “editorial independence,” but it is difficult to believe that its judgments are not influenced by the identity of its corporate parents. Its immediate parent, by the way, is Ingenix, a major player in healthcare information technology, especially billing systems. Ingenix, of course, also has a vested interest in protecting the for-profit medical bureaucracy. Ingenix and its parent UnitedHealth have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to settle class-action lawsuits stemming from investigations spearheaded by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charging that Ingenix promoted a database product that allowed insurers to underpay their members when reimbursing for out-of-network expenses.

Lewin was in existence for three decades when Ingenix and UnitedHealth acquired it in 2007. It’s interesting that before that deal Lewin was often in the news in connection with reports it produced for states such as California, Hawaii and Vermont showing the potential benefits of state single-payer systems. The firm released one such report (for Colorado) after being acquired by Ingenix, but these days Lewin seems to focus more on the hazards of expanded government involvement in healthcare. Lewin Senior Vice President John Sheils (photo) told the Associated Press that “the private insurance industry might just fizzle out altogether” if a public option were enacted.

Sheils insists he is impartial, but he has been aggressive in spreading the word about the potential drawbacks of the public option. He confronted President Obama directly on the issue last week as one of the questioners in an ABC News special whose host, Charles Gibson, seemed determined to bash government involvement in health insurance.

The Lewin Group acquisition added an insignificant amount to UnitedHealth’s annual revenues but it turned out to be a valuable investment for the $80 billion insurance giant. While playing the role of a neutral analyst, the consulting firm is in reality defending the interests of its corporate parents and the rest of the for-profit health insurance business. The most effective business front group is one that believes it is independent.

Regulating Murder

death-cigarettes Despite a long-running war on crime and billions of dollars spent each year on the criminal justice system, murders keep on happening. Instead of trying to end all homicides, perhaps the solution is to give up on abolition and simply regulate the practice: discourage the murder of children, put strong warning labels on guns, impose a tax on killers.

Ridiculous? Yes, but this is roughly what the federal government has just done with the tobacco industry, which legally ends far more lives each year than all the non-corporate murderers in the country combined.

The legislation just signed into law by President Obama — the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act — is billed as an aggressive move to bring the coffin nail industry under federal control for the first time. It starts off with what amounts to a 49-point indictment of tobacco products as a public health menace. Use of these products is called “inherently dangerous,” “addictive” and a “pediatric disease.” The tobacco industry, it is noted, still spends vast sums “to attract new users, retain current users, increase current consumption, and generate favorable long-term attitudes toward smoking and tobacco use.”

All of this is certainly true, but it seems odd to follow this denunciation with legislative language that imposes restrictions on the noxious industry but does not seek to put it out of business. In fact, the law can be seen as conferring some degree of legitimacy on tobacco producers. For example, the industry is given a statutory role in the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, which has to be consulted before any new industry regulations are promulgated. Fortunately, the three seats on the committee given to tobacco manufacturers and growers are non-voting positions, but it is still unseemly — to put it mildly — to have representatives of such a notorious industry so involved in government oversight.

According to Corporate Accountability International, which has played a central role in promoting tobacco control policies: “Not only is the inclusion of the industry on this committee akin to letting the fox guard the henhouse, it runs counter to a treaty provision that obligates ratifying countries to safeguard their health policies against tobacco industry interference.” Kathy Mulvey of CAI adds: “U.S. policymakers must now gird themselves for inevitable attempts by Big Tobacco to delay and thwart [the law].”

The ability of a notorious industry to go on influencing policy is reinforced by the fact that the law generally treats tobacco companies in a way that is not greatly different from other regulated corporations. The Food and Drug Administration is instructed to collect “user fees” from tobacco companies — as if they were pharmaceutical manufacturers seeking to get new drugs approved. Unless tobacco companies plan to “use” the FDA in some way, the fees should at least be called something different; perhaps reparations.

Another problem is that the law mentions that any restrictions on tobacco industry advertising and promotion must be consistent with the First Amendment. You can be sure that the industry will be screaming loudly that the law violates its free speech rights (granted by misguided court rulings). This is another drawback to regulation rather than criminalization.

While some players in the tobacco industry have ardently opposed federal regulation throughout the 15-year campaign to bring it about, some shrewd parties eventually realized that government intervention was inevitable and jumped on the bandwagon. Tobacco giant Philip Morris (now part of Altria) took this tack back in 2000, reaping years of improved p.r. and now a law that allows it and its competitors to continue selling their deadly wares with restrictions that are far from fatal to their profits. As much as corporations like to complain about regulation, sometimes it is their salvation.

Corporate Power is, Alas, Alive and Well

donohue Congratulations, fellow “anti-business activists.” It seems we have forced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to commit $100 million for a campaign designed to remind Americans that they are supposed to love capitalism.

“Many union leaders, some environmentalists, and a growing force of anti-business activists are pushing governments at all levels to close trading markets, lock down capital markets, expand entitlements, and raise taxes and debt to unsustainable levels,” proclaimed the Chamber’s CEO Thomas J. Donohue (photo) recently. “We are going to activate free enterprise supporters, educate the public, and hold politicians accountable as we defend and advance economic freedom.”

After this gratuitous and somewhat puzzling swipe at activists, Donohue made it clear that the campaign’s real target is the federal government, which he suggested is preparing “an avalanche of new rules, restrictions, mandates, and taxes.” However, the events of the past year — the financial bailout, unprecedented intervention in the auto industry, a huge stimulus program, etc. — make it impossible for even Donohue to preach the laissez-faire gospel in its pure form.

“Dire economic circumstances have certainly justified some out-of-the-ordinary remedial actions by government,” Donohue acknowledged. “But enough is enough. If we don’t stop the rapidly growing influence of government over private sector activity, we will squander America’s unmatched capacity to innovate and create a standard of living and free society that are the envy of the world.”

But where is this “avalanche” of new heavy-handed federal interference? The Obama Administration has done its best to limit intervention in the private sector, despite the gravity of the economic crisis. It resisted the pressure to nationalize the likes of Citigroup and Bank of America. Obama was more aggressive in restructuring General Motors, but he insists the feds will not be involved in managing the automaker and will return it to private ownership as soon as possible.

The Administration supported efforts in Congress to curb abusive practices by credit-card companies, but the reform avoided the more radical step of capping interest rates. Along with the Democratic leadership in Congress, the Administration has rejected the single-payer solution to healthcare reform, and it is unclear whether the half-baked alternative of a public option alongside private insurers will make it into the final bill. Obama has moved to restrict but not abolish the environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop removal by major coal mining corporations. And the key demand of organized labor — the Employee Free Choice Act — appears to be stalled in the Senate.

Now comes Obama’s ballyhooed overhaul of financial regulation. The plan has some good features, such as the creation of a consumer protection agency for financial products, but overall it focuses more on rearranging the structure of the regulatory system — mainly by giving more power to the Federal Reserve — rather than truly reining in financial institutions and markets. Even the New York Times pointed out the limited nature of the reforms: “Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing: additional regulations on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul.”

Obama seemed to acknowledge that the plan was less than audacious, saying:

In these efforts, we seek a careful balance. I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of the free market. It has been and will remain the engine of America’s progress — the source of prosperity that’s unrivaled in history. I believe that jobs are best created not by government, but by businesses and entrepreneurs who are willing to take a risk on a good idea. I believe that our role is not to disparage wealth, but to expand its reach; not to stifle the market, but to strengthen its ability to unleash the creativity and innovation that still make this nation the envy of the world.

Huh? Did Donohue use part of the $100 million to bribe an Obama speechwriter to insert Chamber talking points into the President’s remarks? Or is Obama reminding us that neither he nor anyone else in official Washington intends to do anything that seriously challenges corporate power?

A Blagojevich Senate?

singlepayer-protest President Obama and the Democratic leadership say they are serious about enacting health care reform this year, but if the current behavior of some leading Senate Democrats is any indication, we are headed for the weakest kind of change. Some of these senators seem more concerned about protecting the private health insurance industry than in creating a system that does the most to help the uninsured and the underinsured.

Having ruled out the best heath reform of all—the creation of a single payer or Medicare for All plan—the Democrats have been pushing a hybrid system in which everyone who does not already have coverage would be required to purchase it from either a private insurer (with subsidies for those with low income) or a new federal plan. The insurance industry is squawking about that public alternative, saying it would create unfair competition for their offerings.

That’s would you would expect to hear from an industry that wants to hold its long-suffering clients hostage, realizing that if people had the choice of a quality affordable public plan they would abandon the likes of UnitedHealth and Humana in a heartbeat.

What’s amazing is to read in the New York Times that supposedly liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is proposing to placate the insurers by creating a “level playing field” between the public and private plans. That would mean adhering to “principles” such as the following:

The public plan should be self-sustaining, meaning that it would pay all claims from premiums and co-payments.
The public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than the discounted rates now provided by Medicare; and
The government should not compel doctors and hospitals to participate in the public plan just because they participate in Medicare.

Is Schumer out of his mind? His proposals would saddle a social insurance program with the drawbacks of a for-profit carrier.

Why stop with those few principles? To make it really fair, Schumer should insist that the public plan spend the same large sums on wasteful administrative costs as the private insurers and be equally ruthless about denying coverage whenever possible. He should also demand that the public plan set its rates high enough to allow lavish compensation packages for its top officials and generate surpluses equal to the billions in profits taken in by its private counterparts. And then, for good measure, the public plan should be made vulnerable to class action suits by participants and have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation the way that industry leader UnitedHealth Group did earlier this year.

Perhaps then the public plan would be sufficiently inefficient, unresponsive and dysfunctional to provide the level playing field Schumer seeks.

Given the fealty of Democrats like Schumer to the insurance giants, it was satisfying to see him and the rest of the Senate Finance Committee, including its chairman Max Baucus of Montana, put on the spot by activists who repeatedly interrupted a roundtable discussion on expanding health coverage to protest the fact that there was not a single proponent of single payer among the 15 speakers.

Before being removed by Capitol police (photo), one of the protesters accused the committee of listening only to the views of big corporate contributors. Referring to the former governor of Illinois accused of running a pay to play administration, he asked Baucus: “Is this a Blagojevich Senate? Are you the Blagojevich Chairman?” At least Blagojevich had the decency to compromise his principles behind closed doors; Baucus and Schumer do it in plain view.

Note: The protesters represented groups such as Healthcare-NOW, Single Payer Action, and the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

The Corporate Crime Fighting Budget

The call to boost taxes on the wealthy to start paying for healthcare reform is not the only refreshing thing about the budget outline just released by the Obama Administration. There is also a marked shift toward tighter regulation of business. Here are some features of what might be called the Corporate Crime Fighting Budget:

Cracking down on corporate polluters. The Environmental Protection Agency—a joke during the Bush Administration—is slated for a 34 percent increase in funding. This would result in a hike in the budget for core functions such as enforcement to $3.9 billion, an all-time high for the agency.

Cracking down on abusive employers. Obama wants the Department of Labor—another agency enervated by the Bush crowd—to get a smaller increase than EPA, but the additional funds are intended to rebuild DOL’s responsibilities in workplace monitoring. The budget document proposes to “increase funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enabling it to vigorously enforce workplace safety laws and whistleblower protections, and ensure the safety and health of American workers; increase enforcement resources for the Wage and Hour Division to ensure that workers are paid the wages that are due them; and boost funding for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which is charged with pursuing equal employment opportunity and a fair and diverse Federal contract workforce.”

Prosecuting white-collar crooks. The section on the Justice Department in the budget document says that the Administration will seek [not yet quantified] “resources for additional FBI agents to investigate mortgage fraud and white collar crime and for additional Federal prosecutors, civil litigators and bankruptcy attorneys to protect investors, the market, the Federal Government’s investment of resources in the financial crisis, and the American public.”

Thwarting purveyors of tainted food. The Administration plans to “take steps to improve the safety of the Nation’s supply of meat, poultry and processed egg products and to ensure that these products are wholesome, and accurately labeled and packaged.” The proposed budget for the Agriculture Department “provides additional resources to improve food safety inspection and assessment and the ability to determine food safety risks. This will lead to a reduction in foodborne illness and improve public health and safety.” The Food and Drug Administration, which is under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, would also get a hike in funding.

Restricting plunderers of national resources. The section of the budget document on the Interior Department outlines the Administration’s intention to rein in the windfalls long enjoyed by extraction companies with leases to drill and mine on public lands. The plan includes “a new excise tax on offshore oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico to close loopholes that have given oil companies excessive royalty relief” as well as the imposition of user fees and more realistic royalties for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

Controlling drug and healthcare price gouging. The general framework for healthcare reform released by the Administration as part of the budget document contains plans to slow down the growth in Medicare costs. This includes a proposal to force providers of privatized coverage under the name of Medicare Advantage to participate in competitive bidding. Medicare drug costs would be reined in by tightening oversight of Part D spending and by preventing brand-name pharmaceutical companies from paying generic drug producers to keep their low-cost products off the market.

To these should be added tax proposals that would put an end to various boondoggles that have enriched oil companies, hedge funds and other anti-social elements. Some of Obama’s proposals (especially regarding healthcare) do not go nearly far enough, but the budget as a whole represents a major break from the priorities of the Bush Administration. Though you would hardly know that from the geeky, matter-of-fact way it is being promoted by Budget Dirtector Peter Orszag (photo).

Budget documents are, of course, merely wish lists conveyed by the executive to the legislative branch. In the short term, the main impact of Obama’s blueprint will be to launch a massive wave of business lobbying. Now it is up to Congress to resist the entreaties of those paid persuaders and make it clear that the days of unchecked corporate giveaways have come to an end.

Bush Administration, in Bed with Banks, Shuns Union with Automakers

George Bush has strong views on marriage. He is an ardent proponent of the marriage between the financial sector and the federal government, but he apparently finds intolerable a similar union involving the auto industry.

It’s difficult to pin down exactly why the very lame duck Bush is resisting calls for a bailout of Detroit. There were reports, subsequently denied, that he was using his opposition as a bargaining chip to get Congress to go along with his desire for a free trade agreement with Colombia, whose right-wing government is Bush’s only significant ally in Latin America.

Then there’s the theory that he does not want to assist an industry that is heavily unionized and that supposedly brought on its own troubles by giving in to the wage and benefit demands of those unions over the years. And there’s the notion that Bush is trying to reestablish his credentials as a free marketeer, but that’s hard to believe at a time when his administration is pouring seemingly endless taxpayer funds into the likes of AIG.

The explicit statements made by Administration representatives about the reasons for the resistance are perhaps the most preposterous. White House spokesperson Dana Perino suggested that the problem was that Congress had not provided explicit authority to assist industries other than banks. Since when does the Bush Administration worry about explicit Congressional authority in deciding what it can and cannot do? Take the bailout itself. Congress was steamrolled into approving a $700 billion plan under which the federal government would buy up “troubled” assets from banks. That plan was put on the back burner by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as he instead embarked on a program—never debated by Congress—to purchase holdings in the banks themselves. And isn’t it ridiculous to cite a lack of Congressional approval as a reason for not doing something being heavily advocated by leaders of Congress?

Until this mystery is solved, perhaps the best course of action for the automakers is to simply change their identity. Neel Kashkari, the interim assistant secretary at Treasury who is running the bailout, said in a speech on Monday: “We have allocated sufficient capital, $250 billion, so that all qualifying banks, potentially thousands, can participate. Therefore, it is important to note that Treasury will not implement this program on a first-come-first-served basis; there is enough capital allocated for all qualifying institutions.”

With the bailout window wide open for bank, why can’t the automakers follow the lead of investment houses Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs—as well as, more recently, American Express—and redefine themselves as bank holding companies (with cars as a sideline)? GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors that is co-owned by Cerberus Capital, is already moving in that direction. The rest of Detroit should follow suit. After all, the Big Three are not making any money trying to sell cars in the current economic situation; perhaps they will have more luck making loans. And, given the reluctance of real banks to lend, they should have an open field.

This is not Corporate America’s Moment

The votes are still being counted in some places, but the battle for the soul of the new Administration and Congress has begun. Corporate America wasted no time in launching an effort to warn against any initiatives that would be seen as unfriendly to business. The Wall Street Journal is already predicting that Democrats will give in to the pressure and “go slow on controversial labor and regulatory issues.”

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) issued an open letter to Obama pledging to work with the new administration, but that pledge was followed by a dozen pages in which the group outlined its usual agenda of reduced corporate taxes, tort reform, easing of the regulatory “burden,” and so forth . The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was a bit more tactful. Its CEO Thomas Donahue put out a statement vowing to work with Obama and the new Congress “to help quickly restore economic growth,” avoiding for now the more contentious issues.

Not surprisingly, the sharpest battle lines are being drawn on labor law reform. Business has already been mobilizing to fight against proposed legislation—the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)—that would make it easier for workers to organize unions free of employer intimidation. Corporate interests targeted various members of Congress over the EFCA issue during the electoral campaign, to little effect, and undoubtedly intend to keep up the effort. Today NAM President John Engler told the Journal: “This is not the time and this is certainly not the issue with which to build a relationship.”

Someone needs to remind the business lobbies that elections have consequences. When George Bush won reelection four years ago, that same John Engler, speaking for the corporate class, declared: “This will be our moment.” Business Week added: “business groups are already busy claiming considerable credit for Bush’s win. Their wish lists are extensive.” Many of those wishes were granted by Bush and Cheney.

Despite the overblown McCain/Palin rhetoric, Obama did not run as a socialist, but he expressed clear disapproval of the deregulatory agenda. And he accepted extensive help from labor union members, many of whom were motivated by his criticism of corporate excesses and his support (albeit muted) for EFCA.

There may be reasons why the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have to proceed carefully on regulatory and labor issues, not the least of which is the apparent absence of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Anti-union executives may not soon find themselves bodily removed from office, as Montgomery Ward President Sewell Avery was in 1944 (photo). Yet neither should business interests expect their wish list to be the current center of attention. This is not their moment.