As President-Elect Barack Obama prepares to settle into his new digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, big business groups who broke the bank to fight Obama’s priorities during the campaign come crawling back with their hands out.

This election saw unprecedented spending by big business groups like the Chamber of Commerce. which spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Democratic Senate candidates in more than a half dozen states. Senators-Elect like Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley, Mark Udall, and Kay Hagan endured onslaughts from a number of Chamber-financed initiatives that attacked the candidates on taxes, jobs, and most noticeably, for wanting to give workers the free choice to form a union at work.

For all the Chamber’s efforts, for all the tens of millions of dollars funneled to defeat these candidates, one thing is clear: they failed. And now they want President-Elect Obama to "involve the business community" to "spur a return to prosperity." How nice!

Groups including the Nuclear Energy Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rushed to offer help to Mr. Obama Wednesday. At a news conference, the National Association of Manufacturers distributed a booklet titled "A Letter to President-elect Obama" pledging to work with Democrats on a host of business issues.

The Chamber of Commerce extended an olive branch to Mr. Obama Wednesday in a letter from President and CEO Thomas Donohue. "Any successful and sustainable recovery must involve the business community," he wrote. "The Chamber stands ready to work with you and your administration to spur a return to prosperity."

That’s quite a different tone for Donohue, who just a few weeks ago provoked this explanation from Chuck Schumer about the extent to which the Chamber was inappropriately influencing elections by attacking candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Schumer distributed a chart showing the Chamber has donated $16.28 million to Republican candidates this election cycle, and only $329,000 to Democrats. The ads funded by the contributions have all come in 2008, said DSCC spokesman Matt Miller, and have included Chamber affiliates like the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and the Employee Free Action Committee.

Schumer said the Chamber is “supposed to be nonpartisan, and they’ve turned themselves into a wing of the NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee]. They’re running attack ads on issues unrelated to the issues the Chamber stands for, they’re taking partisan stands, and their ads almost dovetail with the campaign ads of the NRSC — in some cases, they use the exact same slogan.”

What did Donohue envision for the election? A ‘butt-biting’ organization to fight for CEO interests by funneling money to protect the identity of anti-worker businesses.

"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said.

Since he took over the chamber, contributions by businesses have soared, often to pay for political advertising known as "issue ads," which are exempt from many of the Federal Election Commission limits.

Under a system Donohue pioneered, corporations contribute money to the chamber, which then finances attack ads targeting individual candidates without revealing the name of the businesses involved in the ads.

Tom Donohue gambled what was left of the Chamber’s creditability when he threw down against Democrats. Obama should shut out the Chamber of Commerce and anyone else who fought his allies this fall.