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GLENN: Here's the latest ad from the DNC on the Chamber of Commerce.
VOICE: Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, they're Bush cronies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is their shield for big business and they're stealing our democracy, spending millions to elect Republicans to do their bidding this Congress. It appears they've even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections. It's incredible
GLENN: It's incredible.
VOICE: from secret foreign money
GLENN: Foreign money.
VOICE: and the Chamber of Commerce to stop stealing our democracy.
PAT: Murder! Murder! Death and mayhem!
GLENN: It really is. It's, like, it's Colonel Mustard. He's in the library with a candle stick.
PAT: Stealing and murdering!
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GLENN: It is really amazing. Theblaze.com is leading with one of the stories today, Glenn Beck calls for the largest day of fundraising for Chamber of Commerce. Look. I don't agree with everything on the Chamber of Commerce.
PAT: I don't agree with their murder!
(Laughter.)
GLENN: But do you know what? My father was a member of the Chamber of Commerce. It is they are made up in fact, do you know what? Let me bring on the executive vice president for government affairs, Bruce Josten. Bruce, are you there?
JOSTEN: I am.
GLENN: How are you?
JOSTEN: I'm great. Thank you for having me on today, and thank you for your contribution to the chamber today.
GLENN: You bet.
JOSTEN: You are doing great work. Our friendsoftheuschamber.com website has received in the past hour, Glenn, now, as a result of you, the single highest contribution we've ever received for an entire day and that's just for the first hour.
GLENN: Holy cow. Holy cow.
PAT: That's great.
GLENN: Well, we're not done yet, Bruce. You know, we would like to we would like to help you out. Now, I want to just talk to you a little bit about some things.
JOSTEN: Okay.
GLENN: This is something that just came to me today. I'm so sick and tired of the of Obama admission making you guys into the enemy of the state. First of all, most of your members are companies that are less than 100 employees, right?
JOSTEN: Correct.
GLENN: Can you give me any stats on this?
JOSTEN: Yeah. About 90% of our members have fewer than 100 employees. About 70 plus percent I think it's 73 or 74 percent of our members have fewer than 20 employees. Our membership is basically a reflection of the American economy, which is overwhelmingly dominated, as you well know, by Mom and Pop, Main Street U.S.A. businesses which is where most of the jobs come from in this country.
GLENN: 70% of jobs are created by small business in America. In hard times it's up to 80%. True or false?
JOSTEN: You're right. In fact, it's the newly formed businesses that actually help create a lot of jobs, according to the Calvin Foundation which has been studying this. So, what we've got to do is get people off their heels and moving forward in this country.
GLENN: Now, let me talk to you about
PAT: Murder. What are you stealing? You're receiving contributions from the KGB.
GLENN: Talk to me about all of your foreign donations that are shadowy.
JOSTEN: We have 115 American Chambers of Commerce abroad in 108 foreign countries. Their membership, they're formed by the American subsidiaries of multinational U.S. companies.
GLENN: Oh. Multinational U.S. companies.
JOSTEN: You're right. That's dangerous.
GLENN: Shadowy right there.
JOSTEN: Yeah. They're doing business on the ground, exporting and selling products and much like the 3,000 Chambers of Commerce here in the United States, they're formed to represent, share their interest concerns and problems and have a place for them to get together, try and resolve those issues and make recommendations and, in effect, advocate them to that foreign country. That's No. 1. That compromises around 100 some thousand dollars out of our $200 million budget.
GLENN: How many billions, though?
JOSTEN: I'm sorry?
GLENN: How many billions of dollars are coming from Exxon Mobil
JOSTEN: I wish. Maybe we can get there today. We hope.
GLENN: Yes.
JOSTEN: We also have, by the way, some bilateral business councils U.S. Brazil, U.S. India, U.S. South Korea, on and on. They come and go. Our members ask us interested in a trade. We host that. They determine, by the way, their completely unaffiliated with us, other than we let we provide them accounting support, management support, note taking support. They define their own program of work. They define their own budget. They assess themselves their own dues required to meet their objectives and we host them.
GLENN: Okay. Now
JOSTEN: They get too big and move out of the chamber as independent organizations. Some stay. Not threatening to anybody, but, again, a problem solving council. We're two groups have and they have two meetings a year, one in the United States and one wherever it is abroad, to try and promote trade.
GLENN: That's a bilateral what?
JOSTEN: Business council.
GLENN: Okay. I'm just I want to help George Soros out here. Here's your next DNC ad. They are a part of a bilateral council which sounds like a trilateral
PAT: Commission.
GLENN: commission.
PAT: It does.
GLENN: Which is shadowy and spooky.
STU: It appears.
GLENN: It appears to be, to those who are into the shadow conspiracies and you heard it out of his own mouth. It sounds like trilateral. There you go. I just want to help them out.
Now, let me ask you a couple of tricky questions here because I just made a donation to you or have we made it yet?
JOSTEN: You have.
GLENN: We have?
JOSTEN: You made a significant donation.
GLENN: I've been trying to get online and it's been down, but I guess we Joe's made it. So, here is the
JOSTEN: It's friendsoftheuschamber.com. It's probably getting a little busy as a result of your promotion.
GLENN: What is it? Friends of the
JOSTEN: friendsoftheuschamber.com or smallbusinessnation.com, either one. If people are having trouble on one, they can go to the other site.
GLENN: Okay. Now, here's where we disagree. I disagree with the idea of open borders and everything else. I believe in the rule of law and enforce our own laws. I don't demonize those people who are here. They're people who have come here illegally and they really do want to I mean, if I were a family if I was a dad and I had a family in Mexico, damn right, if I saw America not enforcing their own laws and I could get out of a country that is spiralling out of control and closer and closer to a drug narco state, you bet I would get out of there. So, it's not about them. It's about us. We need to enforce our own laws, while we make the door of our country bigger and easier to bring people in legally so we know who's here.
JOSTEN: I would completely agree with what you just said, which is why we have consistently pointed out the Federal Government has a track record of abject failure here. They are in charge of the border. They are in charge of immigration policy. We have, for a long time, advocated reform of that system. Our borders clearly need to be protected. The safety of our border citizens, our national security are all important, as well as ensuring legitimate trade and travel between people. So, we are on the exact same page.
Now, our members also want a stable and a legal workforce and the uncertainty that surrounds this, in the past year well, actually in the first quarter of this year, 45 states, states, not the Federal Government, introduced nearly 1200 different pieces of legislation over this, again because of the failure of the Federal Government. So, we have a rather unresponsive Visa program. We have to correct our own problems. We can't be the only country in the world that doesn't have secure borders.
PAT: Exactly. So, it sounds like you're saying that I mean, are you are you saying that you support, you know, securing the border first and then working out the rest of it afterward or are you more along the lines of the Democrat proposal, which is this comprehensive immigration reform which really means that it's a path to citizenship, that it does nothing for the border, all of those things?
GLENN: It's the same thing that happened in the 1980's. Fool me once
JOSTEN: The reality is do we want comprehensive immigration reform? Absolutely, in part for the two points he just mentioned, but the reality politically is you're not going to get the comprehensive immigration reform until we address and secure the borders of this country.
GLENN: I don't think I disagree with you on that.
PAT: Only in that the comprehensive reform that we continually hear about is not the reform we're talking about.
GLENN: You're not as long as we have the borders secure, then I'm willing to talk
PAT: Then you talk about it, yeah.
GLENN: I'm willing to talk to you about anything.
PAT: Right.
GLENN: But you've got to shut the water off first.
PAT: Exactly.
GLENN: That doesn't mean you go back to the back of the line
JOSTEN: and now deceased former senator Ted Kennedy to try and approach and result in a piece of legislation that would accomplish those types of objectives. We're going to have to continue to work on it.
GLENN: Okay. Well, I just wanted to get you on the phone. I'm glad that just in the first hour, it's the biggest fundraising day ever. We wanted to make it your biggest of the day. This just came to me about an hour ago and
JOSTEN: We're glad, as well, and again we thank you because with what's taking place, demonizing and vilifying people that have an opposing viewpoint from a President who ran, as you well know, on a platform of changing the tone and hope and change.
GLENN: He's changed it.
JOSTEN: He changed it for the worse at this point.
GLENN: Yeah.
PAT: And the interesting thing about that is that on the one hand they're demonizing you. Then two days ago he used your organization to try to promote his own agenda.
JOSTEN: Right.
PAT: He used you as an example of something you guys are supporting that it's amazing, the hypocrisy.
GLENN: In the history of the country, because there's something that nobody reports on and, that is, I have four advisors, direct advisors to the President of the United States, four of them, doing four different campaigns to try to boycott and destroy my business. It's never been done before in American history. No one will report on it. You notice you've never read that.
JOSTEN: Right.
GLENN: That's quite a claim to make. If that were not true, you would think you would read: Glenn Beck lies again. I've said that now for over a year on radio, television. Not one word has been printed on that.
JOSTEN: Yeah.
GLENN: It's never happened before in American history. Can you tell me, in the history of the chamber, has there ever been a coordinated attack like this on the chamber ever done by anybody in government like this?
JOSTEN: Nothing like this. Now, we've had some spats and tough times with different administrations, both Republicans and Democrats, yes. I kind of view any administration is going to do something with the business community and the chamber, some things for the business community and some things to it, but never such an avalanche of a continuous broadside attack of misleading inferences and allegations and, by the way, from somebody whose, I believe, president graduated from Harvard Law, taught law, and has turned the principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head. It's now guilty until proven innocent.
GLENN: Can I tell you something? I've never heard anything like it. What was it that Joe Biden said? Do you have that article from Joe Biden, Stu? What was it that Joe Biden said, where he said, Prove to us, prove to us that this isn't happening. Where does that come from?
JOSTEN: He also, a few days ago in a public speech, when defining their accomplishments said, It's too hard to explain.
GLENN: Yeah. (Laughter.) Well, it is hard to explain. I will give you that.
JOSTEN: We would like to debate policy. The ads we have up right now draw a distinction, for example, on the basis of protection and affordable care act which we oppose. We are more than willing to debate anybody on policy grounds, but we are not going to stoop to name calling and outlandish allegations and I think people would like to distract and divert our attention because that's exactly what they are trying to do, divert attention away from their policies. So, I would like to and this organization are going to stay focused on what's important to the American people, which is our economy and their jobs and their livelihoods and their families and turning this thing around.
GLENN: Small businesses America, if you get one thing, get this: Small businesses create 80% of all jobs, not government, not giant corporations, small businesses, people like you saying, I've got an idea, and you hire two people. 80% of all jobs in a recession are created by small business people. The people that are protecting the small business people and I don't agree with them on everything is the Chamber of Commerce. The other thing you need to understand, this government has targeted the chamber unlike anybody that I have seen, except maybe us and FOX News. They are targeting the chamber. I can tell you one thing from experience. If this administration targets you as hard as they have the chamber, it means you're a threat to them and they're you're making a difference.
I put my money where my mouth is. I made a donation today myself. I urge you to do the same. You can find the link at glennbeck.com or you can go to give me the direct link.
JOSTEN: Well, you can go to friendsoftheuschamber.com, uschambersmallbusinessnation.com, or if those two are overloaded, as they have been, my staff just told me they are blocked right now because of your listeners, to simply go to uschamber.com and from there you can link there will be a place for them to click.
GLENN: Okay. Thank you very much, Bruce. I appreciate it.
JOSTEN: Thank you.
GLENN: You bet. Even if it's $10, you can disagree with some of the things but if we don't stand united, they're not going to be small businesses to be able to stand.