Business leaders have said for months that the President has created an “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.” In the midst of the White House announcing a permanent R&D tax credit and an expanded, extended bonus depreciation tax credit for businesses, which amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in free money for them (and which they’re likely to game for billions more), this sounds completely absurd. As Ezra Klein acknowledged yesterday, this White House has gone out of its way to design its policies to the benefit of corporate America as much as humanly possible:

The health-care reform bill bends over backward to preserve each and every private industry currently overcharging us for our care. The Obama campaign publicly supported the bank bailout and then repelled the populist measures to really hammer banker pay when they got into office. The financial reform bill didn’t break up the banks, set leverage requirements in statute or do any of a number of other things that would’ve really hurt the financial industry. The auto bailout was designed to preserve the existence of America’s auto industry, and even the Economist has admitted that the Obama administration did everything in its power to “restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible.” The various stimulus measures have been designed to directly support businesses or indirectly support the people who those businesses rely on.

The point isn’t that all of these policies were good. Some of them weren’t. The point is that the constant accusation that this White House is somehow anti-business, or deaf to the corporate community’s concerns, is a fiction of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. There’s a good argument to be made, I think, that this White House is too focused on business, but it’s annoying to have to frame it as a boldly counterintuitive point, rather than as an obvious conclusion based on their raft of policy initiatives meant to save, help or otherwise improve the position of corporate America.

And so what reward did the White House get for their pro-business stands, while the corporations returned profits to pre-recession levels? The health insurance industry will raise their rates this year and blame it on the Affordable Care Act. The financial industry has shifted their political donations away from Democrats. And after offering hundreds of billions in tax cuts, the same businesses that supported these measures want… personal tax cuts:

The business community likes President Obama’s proposal to accelerate tax write-offs for companies buying equipment and other big-ticket items. But it is clamoring for more — extension of all of the soon-expiring Bush-era tax cuts.

“He’s not really addressing the big issues,” Brad Benson, president of Squires-Belt Material Co. in San Diego, said of Obama. Benson does welcome the president’s proposal on depreciation costs, which would save businesses $200 billion over two years.

“I think it’s maybe a small step in the right direction, but as a manufacturer, I’m more concerned with the tax-cut issue,” said Benson, whose company supplies drywall and other building supplies for commercial and residential construction.

When faced with the choice between Republican and Republican-lite, voters usually take the real thing. It’s the same with big business; they’ll go with the traditional party of big business, where they get to write the legislation completely, over the party that gives them a peek at the legislation and solicits their input and tailors it to their whims. It’s the rich who fight the class war, motivated by greed and fealty to their partners in the upper strata. Trying to win a race for who can satiate that greed fastest seems like a losing battle.