In communities across America, football teams are practicing in the heat of August for the coming season. A common scene is a row of linemen hurling themselves against practice dummies. In much the same way, the U.S. Chamber is applying all of its resources simultaneously against a number of critical issues in an effort to move the ball forward for business.

Players and coaches understand that winning teams don't prevail by brute force alone—they require a strategy. So what is the U.S. Chamber's strategy in these chaotic times, when there is so much on the line? There are three parts.

It begins with our Competitiveness Agenda, the short- and long-term policies that will keep our businesses and workers competitive and prosperous in the worldwide economy. They run the gamut from keeping taxes low, investing in infrastructure, and improving education to health care reform, securing clean and affordable energy, and remaining globally engaged. These are the bread-and-butter issues that we focus on like a laser beam every single day.

The second part of our strategy is to challenge with facts and substance the antigrowth, anti-business, and anti-trade folks who would move this country backward. We're fighting the unions on card check and the many other things they want to do to turn the clock back to 1950. We're fighting the plaintiffs' trial bar and its efforts to expand lawsuits and suck the life out of our best companies. And we intend to engage and win the public debate on trade and global engagement.

The Campaign for Free Enterprise is the third piece of our strategy. Individual opportunity and the potential to realize the American Dream are what make this country great, and are made possible by our free enterprise economic system. In the coming months, the Chamber will initiate grassroots outreach, a major media campaign, and public advocacy efforts to remind the public about what free enterprise means to all of us.

Today, the stakes are too high for small business owners and entrepreneurs to sit idly by while Congress considers proposals to expand federal spending, entitlements, deficits, and debt to levels unknown in our nation's history. Even if you don't agree with the Chamber on every issue, we're all part of the same team trying to restore America's prosperity, unleash the awesome power of the private sector to create new jobs and products, and keep our country true to her free enterprise ideals.

If ever there was a time to stand up for business and American free enterprise, it's now.