FACTSHEET: Tom Donohue
DETAILS
CEO
Tom Donohue is the CEO of U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Donohue has been both praised and criticised as a leader by members of the US chamber of Commerce. He has refocused the Chamber's lobbying and outreach efforts on policies that suit the Chamber's largest and wealthiest corporations. This strategy has increased the the Chamber's income through fundraising, but has alienated many of the small businesses that make up the majority of the Chamber's membership. Donahue has also ramped up the Chamber's spending, doling out $120 million in 2009 on lobbying alone, five times what its nearest cohort, Exxon Mobil, spent.
Before taking the helm of the Chamber in 1997, Donahue spent 13 years as president of the American Trucking Association, where he fundraised and lobbied against the Teamsters union. Prior to the ATA, Donohue lobbied for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and worked as a labor negotiator for the U.S. Postal Service. Donohue was born in Brooklyn in 1938, earned a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University and a master’s degree in business administration from Adelphi University.
QUOTES
We will not allow the business community to be intimidated, and we will use every tool at our disposal to challenge those who try to silence our voice."
-Washington Post, January 11, 2011
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
“Show me the money!”
-Washington Monthly, July/August, 2010
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
“You can never have enough money.”
-Washington Monthly, July/August, 2010
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
“There is no place in our society where there is not warts. The media? Wow. The Chamber business? The lobbying business? The business business? The church? The Boy Scouts? We got jerks every place.”
-Washington Monthly, July/August, 2010
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
“People seem to listen to you more when you’ve got a bagful of cash.”
-New York Times, November 28, 2009
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
“If we got the EPA one [ability to regulate greenhouse gases], then we are in deep shit as a country.”
-Politico, October 26, 2009
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
ORGANIZATIONS
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Source: Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
SOURCES
Polluterwatch - Tom Donohue
www.polluterwatch.com/tom-donohue