Small businesses, entrepreneurship and the freedom of citizens to make their own decisions make the United States unique and greater than other countries, Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer told hundreds of Missouri small-business leaders Wednesday.
Luetkemeyer, the ranking member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, keynote speaker for Missouri's Business Leadership Summit, said he gets to meet with financial leaders from around the world. The committee oversees financial issues such as securities, insurance, banking and housing.
"They come into my office, and they're just as jealous as the dickens over what we have in this country," Luetkemeyer said. "I tell them the trick is economic freedom. It's entrepreneurship. Enabling people to take risks. Enabling entrepreneurs to be entrepreneurs. Enabling them to be able to go out and - if they want to start a new business today, fine. If they want to start one next week, fine."
People in other countries don't have the freedoms to leave one job and take another or start their own business, he said.
In other countries, you can't do that. If you want to change jobs today, change jobs, he said.
Economic freedom and the ability to move about within our economic system make the United States unique and great, he continued.
"It's the energy of us being able to go out and do these things that churns our economy and makes it work," Luetkemeyer said.
A Republican from St. Elizabeth, he serves not only on the Financial Services Committee, but is ranking member of the House Committee on Small Business.
Luetkemeyer is a small businessman, according to his online biography. He worked in the banking and insurance industry for more than 30 years. Within the Missouri House, he served on Finance Services.
Former Republican Gov. Matt Blunt appointed him as the director of the Missouri Division of Tourism.
Luetkemeyer represents Missouri's 3rd Congressional District, which consists of all or part of Cole, Callaway, Camden, Franklin, Gasconade, Jefferson, Lincoln, Maries, Miller, Montgomery, Osage, St. Charles and Warren counties.
The Jefferson City Area Chamber of Commerce hosted the Business Leadership Summit at Capitol Plaza Hotel on Wednesday to offer professional development and business building opportunities to organizations.
Luetkemeyer said those same Europeans who praise America and its economy said they anticipate that when the U.S. economy gets going strongly, Europe will follow. That told him three things.
"Number one, their economy's already over a cliff, and they know it," Luetkemeyer said. "Number two, we're that big, and we can drag them along. And number three, what an opportunity."
He told listeners to stop and think about the opportunity the United States has to drag the rest of the world along economically, as it's waiting for the United States to get its act together - and pull them along and out of the doldrums.
"This is the opportunity of a generation," Luetkemeyer said. "And it starts with all of you in this room. All of you are small business people. You understand what it takes to start a business, run a business and be able to be successful at it."
The country operates under the premise that if you empower people, they will grow our country in ways to help everybody. He said tax cuts from 2017 improved wages for every single demographic.
Now, inflation has taken all that back from them.
"This is where we're headed. This is what we've got to stop," Luetkemeyer said. "And it all starts with you."
Following his speech, he said policies of the President Joe Biden administration appear to be intended to gather as much power and control as possible, at the expense of small businesses and the citizens of the country.
Last Tuesday's election shows this is not the direction citizens want the country headed, he said.
"People are not happy with that way of governing. They are not happy with that direction," he said. "They want more control over their own lives, whether it be at school boards or city councils, or their states or their federal government. They believe that they should be in control. They pay the taxes. They elect citizens to represent them, and they don't feel that they're being represented at this point."
People want change. Two diametrically opposed ideologies are fighting each other. One wants to empower people and believe in them and in small business in this country.
"The other side truly believes in the greatness and goodness of government," Luetkemeyer said. "They believe that if the government can have all the power and control, it can do a better job of deciding who is going to be successful - where are these dollars going to go, and how they can get the government to go in the right direction."
It will play out in elections in 2022, just like it did during the past election, he said.