What do you say to the head of an organization who claims to represent small businesses, cloaks himself in small business statistics, then challenges your organization’s small business credentials while openly denying any involvement on issues such as taxes, health care, regulation and the union agenda?  This is what I encountered  with Lloyd Chapman, President of the American Small Business League, in an interview that took place on CNBC. The discussion was supposed to be a debate on the stimulus package; but, as is his nature, Chapman quickly dropped substance for confrontation – in this case on a niche issue involving government contracting. 

Lloyd Chapman has gained media attention with his shot-from-the-hip provocative statements that generally pit one segment of business against another in order to draw attention to contracting issues that have an impact on only a small sliver of the business community. When you get past the bluster and bravado, you find the facts and statistics he uses to support his claims are often not current or even correct. Also, the solutions he proposes are not always the best policies.

So what’s the harm? In today’s political and economic environment a divided business community has a lot to loose. Lawmakers are eager to take a "divide and conquer" approach when it comes to business.  So when the Lloyd Chapman’s of the world play rich against poor, green against traditional, businesses that provide health care against those that don’t and small against big, the business community is neutralized and weakened during a time when it needs to be the strongest. It is overwhelming the number of major issues that are currently being addressed on Capitol Hill. Legislation involving health care, energy, the environment, taxes, the deficit, trade, and union labor initiatives all have the possibility of changing the way we do business and our nation’s competitiveness in around the world. 

Businesses now, more than ever, need to speak with one voice and address the concerns of lawmakers in a unified and thoughtful way. The U.S. Chamber is that voice and has stepped up to the plate in a very large way to meet those challenges on behalf of the whole business community. 

By the way, to address Lloyd Chapman’s concern, the Chamber has not taken a position on the bill he refers to in the news clip because we have concerns with some of the provisions. We find it more beneficial for our members to actually work for good policies, not merely rail into the ether on the injustices of the world. As an example we worked with the SBA on a regulation that became final last year that has had a major impact on large business government contracts being classified as small. The Chamber supported this regulation. Oddly enough, Mr. Chapman’s organization did not.