So the United States Chamber of Commerce has been getting some bad press over its position on climate change recently, what with a petition being started to ask Anheuser-Busch to step down from the Chamber’s board, and prior to that seeing Nike quit the board, and Apple and three utility companies quit the chamber entirely. However, there’s one group of people that probably aren’t planning on being too hasty to criticize the Chamber’s opinions on climate change. The United States Congress.

Last quarter, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $34.7 million in lobbying, nearly matching the Chamber’s annual lobbying budget only six years ago. In fact, the Q3 spending equals the amount the Chamber spent in the entire first half of this year. This increase in spending is no doubt in part due to the Obama administration’s health care reform and climate change efforts. The more money that comes in, the more Congressmen and Congresswomen may be hesitant to vote on sweeping changes to health care or climate change regulation. Funny how that works. However, NPR reports that last week, Chamber president Tom Donohue softened his stance on climate change.

At a news conference last week, Donohue thumped the table for emphasis as he said, “We’re going to be positive players in this game. It’s OK to, you know, come after us because we don’t support one bill or another. The bottom line is, look at what we have supported, and look at what we will support going forward.”

This is quite different than the intractable stance he’s been quoted as having in the past, and points to the idea that the Chamber may realize it’s alienating many of its members by allying itself with a few core companies. Though I don’t see the Chamber aligning itself with Congress’ climate change bill any time soon, simply being less adamantly against reform is a positive step, and may allow for more dialogue between corporate interests and environmental ones.

photo credit: borman818’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons