Record profits

A few days ago, I noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's legal newspapers in Madison County and West Virginia were unexpectedly making money--how much, though, I couldn't say, as the chamber flack never returned my call. Happily, I've found a partial answer to my question, in the chamber's tax returns.

Public Citizen, the nonprofit consumer group, filed a complaint with the IRS that the chamber and its Institute for Legal Reform failed to report four years' worth of taxable spending on political races nationwide, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and the returns were part of the complaint.

Buried in the ILR's 2004 return, along with the details of its $40 million budget, is the news that the Madison Record earned $3,966 its first year, with $3,899 in the bank heading into 2005. Not bad for a paper created solely as a lobbying vehicle.

Where the Money Goes

The chamber's tax returns offered up other salacious details, like the salaries of its top execs. In 2004, chamber prez Tom Donohue raked in $1.8 million. ILR president Lisa Rickard made $535,000.

The tax returns suggest that the chamber's female execs could use the services of a good trial lawyer. Suzanne Clark, the chamber's executive vice president and COO made $531,000 in 2004, while the guy below her, VP Robert Josten, made $738,000. (ILR chief Rickard must have lobbied hard for a raise, as her salary in 2003 was only a little over $300K.)

But back to that $40 million figure. Chamber heads often claim that big business is the helpless victim of the all-powerful trial bar, but the tax returns make clear the chamber is the big dog in this fight. The ILR's tort reform budget comes on top of the $70 million annual budget for the chamber itself. Just for the sake of comparison, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America spent about $7 million on lobbying in 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The chamber's Institute for Legal Reform spent $20 million.

Please don't write in complaining that ATLA's budget doesn't include all those tobacco lawyers' campaign contributions. The chamber's lobbying figure doesn't include all those insurance and oil company execs' donations either, so this is pretty much apples to apples.