Endangered Markets? $100 Million Campaign Aims to Free Free Enterprise

Posted by: Keith Epstein on June 10

Has free enterprise become such an endangered species that it’s worthy of a multimillion dollar advertising and lobbying campaign? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce evidently thinks so. It is launching the free market system’s first organized defense.

Tom Donohue was expected June 10 to tell members of the Chamber’s board how despite some necessary “remedial actions by government,” including bailouts and $787 billion in stimulus spending, the free market needs some help staying free - to the tune of a $100 million campaign.

The threat, of course, is expanded government roles in banking, car manufacturing, and consumer lending - to say nothing of more to come for the health care, energy, and financial industries. On June 8, for instance, key Senate Republicans warned of the threat to free markets posed by a plan to offer government-overseen insurance as an option to private health plans. “Washington-run programs undermine market-based competition through their ability to impose price controls and shift costs to other purchasers,” the Republicans wrote.

The Chamber’s “Campaign for Free Enterprise” attempts to weave together a coordinated response to the many regulatory and other threats that worry business interests. Anticipated tactics include coordinatedc grassroots lobbying by small businesses and trade associations, advertising and public education campaigns to underscore the importance of free enterprise, programs to enhance economic literacy of younger Americans, and political advocacy in the lead up to the mid-term elections at the end of next year.

“Capitalism is at a crossroads,” says Donohue. “It’s time to remind all Americans that it was a free enterprise system based on the values of individual initiative, hard work, risk, innovation, and profit that built our great country. We must take immediate action to reaffirm the spirit of enterprise in America.”

Donohue was expected to tell the Chamber’s board how “dire economic circumstances have certainly justified some out-of-the-ordinary remedial actions by government, but enough is enough. If we don’t stop the rapidly growing influence of government over private sector activity, we will squander America’s unmatched capacity to innovate and create a standard of living and free society that are the envy of the world.”