I recently had the opportunity to represent the U.S. Chamber at a screening of the documentary Waiting for “Superman” in Atlanta, my home town.

The screening was the first in a 12-city tour to promote and discuss this groundbreaking film about the sad state of K-12 public education. The tour is organized by the Chamber’s public policy think tank, the National Chamber Foundation, headed by former U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

The film follows the lives of five children as they make their way through America’s failing public education system. It’s enough to break your heart.

Anyone who sees this film will quickly recognize that our children—and our nation—face a dark future without education reform that achieves greater accountability, better teachers, and higher standards.

Nationally, countless school systems are encountering the same challenges. Last year, 30% of high school students did not graduate within four years. Among developed countries, the United States ranks 21st out of 30 in science literacy, and 25th in mathematics literacy. By the year 2020, experts estimate that 123 million American jobs will be high-skill, high-wage, but only 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill them.

I could go on and on citing alarming statistics, but the story of our broken public school system is better told in human terms. Behind every statistic are thousands of young people with shattered dreams and little hope for the future. That’s what moviegoers painfully witness in Waiting for “Superman.”

I give this film a “thumbs up” for its honest portrayal of a system that is failing our children and grandchildren and compromising their ability to achieve a decent quality of life. I encourage you to see this movie and channel the outrage over what you see into positive energy that seeks parental involvement in education reform in your own community.

Learn more about the movie at http://www.waitingforsuperman.com. 

“Hardball” host Chris Matthews has a theory on why businesses are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash. Could it be to sink the economy and torpedo the president? If you’re looking for a textbook case of how some in the media fail to understand how businesses really operate, read on.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know, a great question, Charles, that wasn't on my list to ask but I'm going to ask you because you seem like a sophisticated guy of many parts. You think business can sit on those billions and trillions of dollars for two more years after they screw Obama this time? Are they going to keep sitting on their money so they don't invest and help the economy for two long years to get Mr. Excitement Mitt Romney elected president? Will they do that to the country?

Businesses small and large, public and private, have one principal focus, and that’s creating value for their investors. Obviously, businesses would like nothing better than for the economy to succeed as soon possible. And they don’t care who gets the credit.

But Washington isn’t helping. Congressional leadership and President Obama’s administration have created great uncertainty, and uncertainty is the enemy of investment, risk, innovation, and hiring.

They passed health care and financial reform legislation that will result in hundreds of thousands of pages of new regulations, more bureaucracy, and more government involvement in the private sector. Business leaders are certain that these laws will increase their health care costs and hinder their access to capital, but they don’t know when or by how much until all of the pending regulations are in place.

Further, Congress went home to campaign for the elections without extending marginal income, capital gains, and dividend tax rates that are set to expire at year end, leaving many small business owners and investors wondering if they will face a massive tax hike.

In addition, businesses are warily eyeing a bevy of new workplace and environmental regulations being cooked up by the EPA, the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human and Services and other agencies, once again adding to uncertainty and stalling job creation.

President Obama could benefit politically from a strong economy by joining the business community in calling for low taxes and regulations, less spending and government intervention in the private sector, expanded trade opportunities, a comprehensive energy policy, and greater investment in our critical infrastructure. These are policies that will infuse businesses with confidence, get the $1.8 trillion off the sidelines, and spark a strong and lasting economic recovery. If he followed this path, President Obama would find business among his most vocal supporters.

With the midterm elections fast approaching and the economy still struggling, the administration and some members of Congress suddenly appear eager to appease disgruntled voters with policies purporting to spark job creation. After legislating overhauls of our health care and financial systems and accelerating burdensome regulatory requirements at every level, it’s about time that Washington policymakers focus on jobs.

The administration has proposed a stimulus package that includes a long-term extension and expansion of the R&E tax credit, $50 billion in infrastructure spending, and a provision temporarily providing full expensing for businesses.

The president’s proposals for expensing and the R&E credit have merit. Both should be made a permanent part of the tax code. However, the net impact of these proposals in the current environment is questionable as they are aimed at parts of the economy that are already performing. Moreover, paying for these cuts by increasing taxes on other sectors is likely to severely mitigate any short-run benefits. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not pro-growth tax policy. As is so often the case, they seem to forget it is our money they are using, not theirs.

If Congress and the administration are serious about using tax policy to drive economic recovery, they will extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, AMT relief, and the dozens of other extender provisions that have expired, in addition to the R&E tax credit. One of the best ways to grow the economy fast enough to create jobs and drive down the unemployment rate is to ensure that taxes do not increase for consumers and businesses.

In addition to preventing huge tax increases, policymakers should act to alleviate a growing feeling of regulatory uncertainty that has businesses hunkered down in a “wait and see” mode. Businesses are waiting to see how regulations pertaining to the health care and financial regulatory reform laws will impact health insurance costs and access to credit. They’re anxious about potential environmental rules that could drive up energy and other costs and a possible overhaul of labor and workplace rules. Before they start hiring and investing again, businesses need assurances that they won’t be buried under an avalanche of new burdensome and unnecessary regulations.

Ever-rising health care costs are crippling our small businesses and bankrupting our nation which is why the business community has long championed health care reform. It is also why they were forced to oppose the health care legislation signed into law this past March. Rather than do the hard work of fundamentally changing how the health care system operates and changing the overall upward trajectory in spending, lawmakers decided instead to create more complexity and raise taxes in order to pour even more money into an unsustainable system.

Defenders of the legislation like to point out that even though the bill does nothing to bend the cost curve it does provide health care coverage for the uninsured. This is a noble goal and one that we share. The question is how to achieve that goal. Will the uninsured be better served by a shift to government run care or by turning instead to the free market? Avik Roy examined this very question recently in commentary on a debate between Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein and Representative Paul Ryan:

Liberals believe that imposing price controls is the way to bring down costs. Unfortunately, price controls have been tried over and over again in the Medicare system, with no long-term effect on Medicare expenditures…Price controls, in a system where health care is “free” at the point of care, give patients and doctors no incentive to think about value: is it worth spending $100,000 on this high-tech cancer treatment that may extend your life by four months? The British approach is to say no one can have that treatment, because it’s too expensive. The free-market approach is to incentivize companies to set lower prices for their products, so that they will be widely adopted, and to assign higher value to those products that patients find to be genuinely life-enhancing while assigning lower value to incremental advances. Another side effect of price controls is the destruction of the American pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical technology industries, which employ more people than do Detroit’s Big Three, and do much more for our economy and our quality of life.

The alternative approach, advocated by Paul Ryan, is to let patients buy their own insurance for themselves, instead of getting it from their employers or the government. This way, they can shop for value, and weed out wasteful or needlessly expensive plans. The market-based system incentivizes individuals to act responsibly, which generates enormous savings in aggregate. This is how it’s done in Switzerland, whose government spends only 2.7% of GDP on health care, compared to our government’s 7.4%. Switzerland has universal coverage, with graduated subsidies for those in need, and arguably the highest-quality health care system in the world.

The Swiss have achieved every goal that liberals seek from a health-care system, excepting those for whom abolition of the private sector is also an important objective.

Current leaders in Congress have made no attempt to hide the fact that the health care legislation passed this year was merely the first step toward driving the private sector out of health care. That is why this November we need to elect new leaders to Congress – ones who recognize that only market-based solutions can deliver the best care for all Americans.