SB Summit – Sen. Landrieu on Health Care, Education, and Energy

by Brad Peck
 
Sitting out at the Salesgenie.com Cyber Café but can still feel the energy in the room, very excited crowd. David Chavern opened the festivities today with a very nice introduction of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu. 
 
Sen. Landrieu spoke first of her strong affinity for small business and her pleasure at chairing the Senate Small Business Committee. She wants to restore funding for the Small Business Administration and focus it on promoting growth and expansion. We need to not just have an SBA, we need to have an excellent SBA. All programs should be evaluated, if they are working expand them, if not, kill them. The SBA needs to work, as a partner, with community banks to ensure that our small businesses have the capital they need. The Senator then spoke about reforming FEMA and positioning the Federal Government to organize and initiate recovery programs with Local and State governments, as well as businesses.
 
Moving on to the big agenda items, Senator Landrieu spoke of the need for health care reform. She feels that though we don’t have a consensus on solutions, there is a strong understanding that something needs to be done. She agrees with the President’s desire to tackle health care first because health care costs are really hurting our small businesses. The Senator believes money could be saved with a new health care model; which should disconnect employee health care from employers on a voluntary basis and provide private-market insurance, not run by government, but subsidized based on income.
 
In addition to health care Senator Landrieu was passionate about education. We have no greater challenge or need than the need to better our education system. It frustrates her to see a public school system which could be better. We need schools to be competitive and we need to reward performance. The Senator feels that President Obama will be transformational in this regard. She notes that the President and First Lady have visited three schools since moving into the White House, and all three were non-traditional ones.

On energy Senator Landrieu is not in favor of the current cap-and-trade proposal – big applause from the crowd. She feels there are too many questions, not enough details and is “perplexed how we are going to transition to the future if we blow up the bridge we are standing on.”  The Senator said we need renewables, we need nuclear, we need efficiency, but the current proposal is not ready to be put into the oven.

Senator Landrieu closed by encouraging everyone in the room to get involved and make their needs known on Capitol Hill.