President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris at the Covid-19 Advisory Committee meeting of the Transition Team on November 9, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Top U.S. business leaders on Monday urged Congress to certify this week President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump, who has refused to acknowledge his loss in the 2020 election.
Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Manufacturers Association, and the New York City Association issued separate statements calling for an end to efforts to undermine Biden’s victory.
“These presidential elections have been decided and it is time for the country to move forward. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris have won the Electoral College and the courts have rejected the challenges to the electoral process.” states the Partnership for New York City said in its statement.
“Congress should certify the election vote on Wednesday, January 6. Attempts to thwart or delay this process go against the essential principles of our democracy,” the group said.
Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas Donohue in his statement said that “the efforts of some members of Congress to ignore certified election results in an effort to change the outcome of elections or try to make a political point in the long run it undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in an additional division between our nation. “
And the president and CEO of the National Manufacturers Association, Jay Timmons, cited in his statement the fact that manufacturing workers have “heroically intensified” the production of food, vaccines, drugs and other products to combat the furious Covid-19 epidemic over the past year.
“Our industry has been struggling to protect our country and we are now asking Congress to join us in healing our nation, rather than encouraging more division and vitriol,” Timmons said.
The Congress is due to meet on Wednesday to certify the results of the Electoral College.
Several Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives have said they will challenge the certification of voters from various battlefield states that gave Biden his margin of victory.
This effort is expected to fail because both the House and Senate would have to reject the Electoral College’s count in favor of Biden to invalidate the results. Democrats have the majority of seats in the House, which ensures that this measure would fail, and there are enough Republican senators who have said they will not desert Biden’s victory to defeat the effort in his House of Congress.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that he was swindled by both the popular vote victory and the Electoral College victory by widespread ballot fraud.