by Ricardo Harvin

The Summit is in full swing, with a very energized group - proof of which was evidenced by standing room only sessions this afternoon, which didn't thin out even though things were running a bit behind and cocktails were waiting.

I sat in on the "Celebrating Free Enterprise" session, where Stan Anderson, Senior Counsel to the President and CEO and Managing Director, Campaign for Free Enterprise, U.S. Chamber of Commerce spoke.

He reiterated the Chamber's commitment to the Free Enterprise campaign, calling it "One of the most important things the Chamber has done in its 100-year history."

Stan followed up with some of the key reasons why the Chamber launched the campaign, and its primary goals, which is to educate the American people about the free enterprise system. My dictation skills are nonexistent, but here are some of the highlights from this session.

An educated voter is our most sought after objective. That's what's most important and what we were thinking about when we developed the campaign.

The free enterprise system has created an atmosphere that has allowed the ingenuity of our people to create the country as we know it.

Highlighting the need for a concerted educational effort, Stan cited a recent survey in which 33% of people under 30 said socialism was better than free enterprise. "We have a real challenge before if we are to convince people that the free enterprise system is the answer."

On Regulation: Business shouldn't be against regulation. We need regulation in our society. This building works on trying to get better regulation every day. Business needs consistency, if you don't know what the rules are, or if the rules keep changing, that's when you've got a problem

On Taxes: Congress has passed, and the President has signed, 26 new taxes in just over a year. That's part of the challenge that we face.

In our view, Congress and the administration should have one priority: Create the atmosphere where business can create the jobs we need.

We need nearly 23 million new jobs over the next 10 years just to get back to where we were three years ago [about a 5.1% unemployment rate].

That's an enormous challenge, but it's been done before - in the 1990's.

We've been focusing on jobs here [at the Chamber]. Last January, Tom Donohue set forth a six point program that we feel was the starting point of the discussions we need to have, and we ran an ad prior to the State of the Union laying out our position.

I'm happy to report that we were a little bit successful - in his State of the Union address, the President stated quoted the Chamber directly, and referenced several of the other points we made.

We've also been very active in taking our message on the road. On education, we just went to New Orleans, which has rebuilt their school system by looking around the country and adopting the best policies that they could find. For example, getting rid of teacher tenure so they could fire the bad teachers and hire the good ones. 70% of New Orleans students now attend charter schools, and their educational system has become one of the best in the country.

Stan finished up by specifying several actions that every supporter of the free enterprise system can take:

1.    Sign the Free Enterprise pledge, and encourage employees, family, friends to do the same thing
2.    Sign up for our newsletter to get information on what we're doing and events around the country.
3.    Volunteer for our Junior Achievement program.
4.    Urge your local chambers to get involved.
5.    Put out a press release stating your involvement in, and support of, the campaign.
6.    Download, share and post our videos, ads and web badges. Use them as often as you want.
7.    Join the thousands of American Free Enterprise fans on Facebook,  follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group.

Lastly, watch the five finalist videos and vote to help select the winner of the "I Am Free Enterprise" video contest "and GET ACTIVE, that's the most important thing Americans can do to protect Free Enterprise."