Republicans have spent the last couple weeks railing against “woke” corporations, calling on supporters to boycott companies that have taken stands against their attacks on voting rights and in some cases threatening businesses that break with them ideologically. “Corporations will invite serious consequences,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned this week, “if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”
But rumors of the death of the cozy relationship between the corporate world and the GOP have been greatly exaggerated. The business community may have taken stands against Republican outrages after the January 6 insurrection and the recent passage of Georgia’s draconian voting restrictions—but business is still business, and a bottom line is still a bottom line, and companies are still going to go on the attack against anything they perceive to be a threat to it.
Take Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan. The sweeping proposal, which Democrats may try to pass through reconciliation once its final details are worked out, appears to command broad support from the American people, who overwhelmingly approve of raising taxes on corporations to fund repairs to the country’s roads and bridges and other ambitious projects. But the corporate world, predictably, isn’t exactly pleased with the idea of a corporate tax hike, and is mobilizing against Biden’s efforts. “The benefits of infrastructure would be offset by punitive tax increases,” Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the package, told Politico. “And if they move ahead with only Democratic votes, the concept of doing anything on a bipartisan basis would be over and it would just reinforce the kind of gridlock that has prevented progress on every other issue.”
Under the Biden legislation, the corporate tax rate would increase from 21% to 28%—and while corporations and business groups have expressed support for infrastructure improvements in the past, a number of high-powered executives, companies, and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce oppose raising taxes on corporations to do it. “It really does matter if this is totally partisan,” one CEO told the outlet. “Biden made a lot of promises to do this stuff differently. But while it has a shinier veneer, a lot of it just seems like Trump doing everything his way.”
It doesn’t, of course. But the corporations’ opposition puts them in league with Republicans, who haven’t put forth much in the way of a counter-proposal but have nonetheless vowed to do what they can to stymie the Democrats, arguing that their plan defines infrastructure too broadly and would hurt the economy. “I’m going to fight them every step of the way,” McConnell said after Biden outlined his plan. “I think this is the wrong prescription for America.” That might not matter: the Senate parliamentarian this week said that reconciliation could be used for infrastructure, potentially clearing the way for Democrats to pass their package without GOP support. Still, passing it would require a simple majority that the Democrats may not have at the moment, as Senators Joe Manchin and Mark Warner have each expressed reservations about the bill. It’s not quite clear what Warner’s concerns are, but Manchin’s echo those of the business world and his colleagues on the other side of the aisle: “If I don’t vote to get on it,” he said in a recent radio interview, expressing concern about corporate tax increases, the bill is “not going anywhere.”
One supposes that Democrats will find a way to unify, even if it means the bill undergoes some changes along the way. But it remains to be seen what, if any, concessions will be enough to placate the corporate world. On the one hand, there have been some signs of openness. Jeff Bezos, taking a break from his crusade to keep his workers from unionizing, expressed measured support for a “rise in the corporate tax rate. But he also declined to fully endorse the Biden plan, calling for a more “balanced” approach. The lack of clarity about what that means hints at the limitations in expecting the corporate world to help “fix” the problems facing the nation, as Jamie Dimon called on the private sector to do in his annual shareholders letter Wednesday. Companies can and should be an engine for good, particularly on social equity issues. But profit motives can also complicate the corporate world’s efforts to be, as Dimon suggested, a “responsible community citizen”—or to be seen as one. “Business doesn’t have a political party,” as the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin put it Tuesday. “Its party is profit.”
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