Tom Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO

Energy companies are abandoning the sinking ship of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in droves over its opposition to clean energy action, whether by the EPA or by Congress.

Under pressure, Chamber president Tom Donohue today claimed the Chamber “continues to support strong federal legislation and a binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.” And spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel recently argued that the Chamber respects the science of climate change:

We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming.

This is a blatant falsehood, by any definition. Just last month, the Chamber’s Senior Vice President William Kovacs called for the “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” to put “the science of climate change on trial.” The Chamber, dominated by pollution-industry skeptics such as Don Blankenship, Harry Alford, and Fred Palmer, has questioned climate science since at least 1992:

2008: Chamber President Tom Donohue Says ‘Scientific Inquiry’ Into Climate Change ‘Should Continue’ Because Of ‘Cooling Trend.’ [U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 3/4/08]

2001: Chamber Claims Global Warming ‘About One Percent From Human Activity,’ Says ‘Things Just Change.’ [CNNFN, 7/16/01]

1992: Chamber Sponsors Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels To ‘Refute The Global Warming Warnings.’ [Chicago Sun-Times, 5/13/92]

In addition to being the Chamber of Commerce president, Tom Donohue works for Union Pacific, a company opposed to climate regulation.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) has ruffled some feathers in both the GOP and the banking industry by suggesting a regulatory reform package that consolidates all of the existing banking regulators into one super-regulator. The financial services industry roundly panned the idea, claiming that “the checks and balances under the current system are pretty good.” “The dual banking system has served this country exceedingly well for 150 years or more,” said Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing today, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) agreed, and added that the regulators shouldn’t be consolidated because it brings him great personal enjoyment to watch them blame each other for regulatory failures:

You mentioned having an alphabet soup of [regulators] coming to talk to us, and it’s not unlike witnesses coming before our committee with differing points of view in many ways. I have to tell you, I have enjoyed that. Each of the regulators — sometimes gleefully, sometimes not — points out the deficiencies of the other regulators. And I have to tell you, there’s some merit in that, just for what it’s worth. To have a captive regulator, much like we had with the GSE’s, which would be the case with all banks, to me, could be very problematic.

Watch it:

Contrary to Corker, warring regulators is absolutely unlike witnesses coming before a committee, because the regulators are also responsible for, well, ensuring the safety of the banking system. It’s not purely academic, and having regulators snipe at each other undermines faith in the regulatory system and prevents a proper level of accountability when that system fails.

As Felix Salmon has opined, “we need a powerful single regulator with teeth, not a council of bickering sub-regulators.” Indeed, a patchwork of regulators — particularly in a system in which the agencies are funded by fees paid by the very banks they regulate — encourages a race-to-the-bottom and regulator shopping. And that’s assuming an institution doesn’t simply slip through the cracks, with no one paying it enough attention.

Having one super-regulator would bring its own set of challenges and doesn’t ensure that all problems disappear. After all, Great Britain has just one regulator (with the Bank of England responsible for monitoring systemic risk), and still faced a financial shock. But consolidation would, at least, prevent banks from playing regulators off each other, and stop the completely nonsensical practice of making regulatory agencies compete for the “right” to regulate a particular institution.

As the New York Times reported, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair have been “at each other’s throats” on a whole host of issues since the economic meltdown, and refusing to consolidate the regulators “could intensify their turf battles.” While that may be great in terms of providing Corker with an afternoon’s entertainment, it does not help create a regulatory environment that is efficient and holds regulators accountable.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Census Bureau released poverty data for 2008, which showed that the poverty rate has risen to an eleven-year high of 13.2 percent, with 39.8 million people in poverty (including 14 million children). This the highest number of people living below the poverty line since 1960. (And for those keeping score, in 2008, the poverty line for a family of two adults and two children was $21,834; for a family of two adults and one child, it was $17,330.)

Yesterday, the Census Bureau put out more detailed data on poverty and incomes, which showed that the economic downturn has widened the gap between the richest and poorest Americans:

The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans — those making more than $138,000 each year — earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.

Of course, this gap will likely narrow again in the next few years, as the richest Americans likely lost quite a bit of their income in 2009 (in terms of absolute dollars). But even before the economic crash, income inequality was at its highest level since 1928, showing that there is more than the recession causing such a disparity.

Thanks to the income hit that low- and moderate-income Americans have had to endure (in the form of layoffs or reduced hours), use of food stamps has jumped 13 percent, to nearly 9.8 million U.S. households, the data shows. And the increase “was most evident in households with two or more workers, highlighting the impact of the recession on both working families and unemployed single people.”

“There are lots of people who are using food stamps for the first time, because they don’t have any other options,” said Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group in Washington. And if nothing else, one thing these numbers do is make the case for a stronger social safety net, as it’s abundantly clear onto whom the brunt of the recession is falling. And this means not just upping the dollar amount, but modernizing the system to ensure that it’s accessible.

For instance, the Houston Chronicle pointed out that “Texas isn’t coming close to meeting federal requirements to process food stamp applications within a month.” “Last month, about 38,000 new applicants were left awaiting approval even though the federal deadline had passed. About one in six applications is processed incorrectly,” the Chronicle found. This is inexcusable at the best of times, and unforgivable in the recession we’ve been dealing with. The entire social safety net — unemployment benefits, Food Stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — needs to be open to the people it is meant to serve, it it’s going to have a wide effect on mitigating economic downturns.