Newt Gingrich
Chairman, The Gingrich Group

With a little creativity and ingenuity, the next two years could be very productive for American businesses.

There are three keys to this becoming a period of positive achievement.

Setting the right agenda. Why are financial activities moving from New York to London, and to what extent does Sarbanes-Oxley need to be rethought to ensure that New York remains the center of the world financial market? To what extent do we need a bold new program of tort, tax, regulatory, and education reform to respond to growing competition from India and China? Instead of defending income disparity, how do we build support for changes in education that would help the poorest Americans rise and become successful?

Offering new and better solutions. The free market is developing new solutions every day, but business does not take credit for them nor are they applied to government policies. When Wal-Mart offers a month's supply of generic drugs for $4 and Meijer offers free child antibiotics for a dozen of the most common prescriptions, there is clearly a marketplace effect starting to take place in health care. Less government spending on health care requires more open markets-not more bureaucracy.

Educating and mobilizing the grassroots. Constituents have a greater impact on their representatives' voting behavior than Washington lobbyists have. The American business community is perfectly positioned to educate its employees about their enlightened self-interest in a more competitive and more productive America. Freshman Democrats in particular will find it in their own interests to pay more attention to their constituents than they do their Washington leadership.

The past six years have made Americans anxious about their economic future and more worried than ever about the consequences of international competition on their own well-being.

A recent Democratic Leadership Council survey shows that even though they understand we're in a new global economy and have an innate optimism about America, a majority of Americans believe their standard of living will be lower in a decade. A plurality of them would limit America's engagement in the world economy rather than try to compete and win in it. I've argued that Democrats need to reject pessimism, defeatism, and protectionism and offer a vision for hope, optimism, and making America a winner again in the global economy.

But we won't be able to do that without the help of the business community.

With the old social contract unraveling in the global economy-and industries less and less able to offer health insurance and retirement benefits and stay competitive-it's understandable why middle class Americans are anxious about their standard of living. 

We need to write a new social compact in which every job must come with a 401(k) plan; every person willing to work for it has the chance to get a college degree; and all Americans have the opportunity to afford health insurance and the responsibility to cover their families and take better care of themselves. That kind of family opportunity and security package can relieve anxieties and free us up to do what Americans have always done best-innovate and win in the world economy.

Business can be a big part of that solution.