MEDIA INVITATION: Public Citizen’s Chamber Watch Hosts Small Business Summit on Capitol Hill
June 9, 2016
MEDIA INVITATION: Public Citizen’s Chamber Watch Hosts Small Business Summit on Capitol Hill
Chamber of Commerce Claims to Speak for Small Businesses, but Does Not Share Their Concerns
WHAT: Members of the press are invited to attend a small business summit on Capitol Hill hosted by Public Citizen’s U.S. Chamber Watch program, featuring small business leaders who will set the record straight on a number of issues of interest to small and medium-sized businesses as well as sustainable and green businesses. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) will keynote the event.
Chamber Watch’s summit will follow the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s own “small business” summit. The Chamber, the nation’s largest lobbying organization, claims to represent the interests of small businesses but in reality pushes an agenda almost entirely driven by its largest multinational corporate donors. Many of the featured speakers at its event are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and other Washington insiders.
The Chamber’s agenda runs counter to the interests of many in the business community on a wide variety of issues. Three of these issues are the environment, energy and taxes. Chamber Watch’s small business summit will feature a panel on taxes and one discussing environmental and energy policy. The environment and energy panel will present small business perspectives on offshore drilling, the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States rule and other related topics. The tax panel will focus on the fundamental unfairness of the corporate income tax code, which stacks the deck against small and medium-sized businesses that cannot shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions via shell companies, subsidiaries, inversions and other tax avoidance schemes.
WHO: U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
Dan Dudis, Public Citizen’s Chamber Watch
Bill Parks, NRS and American Sustainable Business Council
Tony Sandkamp, Sandkamp Woodworks LLC and Main Street Alliance
Richard Phillips, Citizens for Tax Justice
Ike Broaddus, Old Bust Head Brewing Company
Frank Knapp, The Knapp Agency and American Sustainable Business Council
Bryan McGannon, American Sustainable Business Council
WHERE: Room 485, Russell Senate Office Building, 2 Constitution Ave. NE, Washington, D.C.
WHEN: 2:30–5 p.m., Wednesday, June 15
RSVP: Dan Dudis, ddudis@citizen.org, (202) 454-5103
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