When Dr. Will Ross arrived at the White House for a business and economic briefing last Thursday, he thought he would only have a few minutes to share his ideas with Obama’s senior administration officials.
The sit-down meeting lasted four hours.
“I really felt that I was heard, as well as the other leaders who were with me,” said Ross, M.D., a member of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission and associate dean for diversity/assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine.
Ross was one of 10 St. Louis business and civic leaders who were invited to provide feedback to Obama administration officials on economic competitiveness, innovation and job creation in Missouri.
It was the 32nd such briefing that the White House has held with leaders from more than 45 cities across 35 states.
Ross came with the focus of eliminating health disparities through job creation.
“The overall health of the community is dependent on the creation of small businesses that could create livable wages,” Ross said. “We have to secure these communities and provide an economic anchor first.”
Seven of Obama’s top administrators – from health to commerce – provided information and answered questions for the group.
“They were well organized, and I was absolutely impressed,” Ross said. “The president has acquired the best economic team I could possibly imagine. They were brilliant.”
Dolores Gunn, M.D., director of the St. Louis County Department of Health, focused her comments on health care reform and the potential effects of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Affordable Care Act.
“That was spoken very frankly during the meeting,” Gunn said.
Michael Hash, director of the Health Reform Office, discussed the Affordable Care Act and its case status at the Supreme Court.
A few attendees lamented the current high costs of providing healthcare to their employees and noted that has prevented them from hiring, according to a White House press release.
However, one attendee suggested that the $2,000 penalty for non-participating employers is too low. He hopes employers will do the right thing and buy into state exchanges to provide employee health insurance, which will help promote employee retention and satisfaction.
Bruce Andrews, chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Commerce, discussed the National Export Initiative, which aims to double U.S. exports by 2014. He noted that 84 percent of the world’s consumers by 2016 will live outside of the U.S.
That fact hit home for Lester Green, a business development specialist for Vashon Jeff VanderLou Initiative.
“If you have a product that you want to mass-produce, your customers won’t even live in the U.S,” Green said. “You can’t get your product out there thinking you need it to be just here in North St. Louis.”
Green said the meeting helped him realize the possibilities for collaboration across industries and regions for innovation.
The officials also talked about innovative programs underway to make public education an attractive and effective option for families, said Joshua K. Randall, vice president of building development for Kwame Building Group, Inc.
The idea Randall brought to the table was that student loans should be more forgivable.
“With the ever-growing cost of higher education, you have young people coming out of college that are burdened with debt,” Randall said. “It’s difficult to be innovative when you have the white elephant in the room saying that at some point you have to make payment on this quarter-million dollars.”
Randall and the group urged the administration to increase promotion around the Income Based Repayment program for federal student loans, which is a repayment plan that makes monthly payments more affordable.
The St. Louis representatives all told variations of the same theme, Ross said.
“A lot of small businesses still need social capital to expand,” Ross said of the overall theme. “The Obama administration can’t back away from that need to not only provide capital but to also provide a constant source of skilled workers.”
Portia Wu, senior policy advisor for mobility and opportunity policy for the White House Domestic Policy Council, discussed the ongoing challenge facing the business community to fill their open jobs with the required skilled workers.
She noted that the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program has helped move the needle on this issue, but there needs to be more collaboration between education institutions, the private sector and local governments if there is going to be significant progress.
Other St. Louisans who attended the White House briefing included James Brown, Washington office director for St. Louis; Jeremy Haldeman, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan; Paul Kalchbrenner of EnGage LLC; Joseph Musker, vice president of federal affairs for Centene Corp.; and Scott Intagliata, sales director for Unico, Inc.
Ross said the group was very impressed with the advisors, and they extended an invitation to hold a similar meeting in St. Louis with even more leaders and small business owners. Administration officials said they would set up a time.
