As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launches a campaign to create 20 million new jobs, it is also struggling to represent members whose opinions on the nation's major public policy issues have grown increasingly diverse.

Doug Pinkham, president of the Public Affairs Council, told The Hill that policies such as revitalizing the economy, reforming the healthcare system and updating financial market regulations have grown so complicated and far-reaching that businesses are divided on how best to tackle them.

"These are mega-issues where there is a lot of difference of opinion," Pinkham told The Hill.

Take the issue of climate change: Five companies have dropped or downgraded their Chamber membership because of the Chamber's opposition to climate legislation in Congress. Meanwhile, a coalition of Silicon Valley companies that includes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! is running ads urging the Chamber to support the climate legislation.

The Chamber's challenge is to represent a broad array of industrial sectors that view some of these public policy issues differently.

The Hill noted that the Council surveyed 130 corporate public-affairs executives in 2009 and found fewer were relying on their business associations to lobby on their behalf.

In the 2005 survey, eight out of 10 said they relied on their business associations. In the most recent survey, six out of 10 executives said they used their business associations for name identification, lobbying and other advocacy efforts.

"We attribute it to the increasing difficulty of forging consensus on these mega-issues," Pinkham said.

See the full story at http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/62953-chamber-makes-push-extolling-free-enterprise.