The Free Enterprise Express made its way through Kentucky this week.

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Chamber of Commerce toured shops and spoke to business leaders.

Here's what they had to say about ways Washington can help Kentucky's economy.

Free enterprise is based on the idea that 340 million people across the country have better ideas than just politicians in Washington or in Frankfurt.

And so some of the things we've heard about are, you know, how do we get prices down in communities?

Well, competition is the number one thing to do about that.

How do we get improve the workforce?

We need to do things to improve the quality of schools.

We need to do things to improve the quality of job training so that people are being prepared for the changing economy.

Our biggest challenge, which is the opportunity, is workforce and specifically in the skilled trades.

The big help that we could seek is around policy.

With reentry of workforce and workers coming back into the workforce, no matter what their background is.

But working with the nonprofits is a big piece of what we're working on.

There's been a lot of retirement and knowledge that's retired out of the trades and now the craft.

And right now we've we've got to change the direction of that.

So the people who we assist usually will have a less than ideal background.

And they're not in the labor force, but they would like to be in the labor force.

And of course, Kentucky needs them in the labor force because our labor force participation is always low.

So a strong economy fueled by strong business community is about the best thing that can happen to the people who we assist, because it means more opportunity for them.

It means more jobs, better benefits, better wages, and it means employers are more willing to consider people who don't have a perfect background.

The number one thing that we can tell our representatives in Washington is that policy matters, and that if you get the barriers to faster growth out of the way that people in Kentucky and people across the country are prepared to to work hard and to innovate.

Muscle construction is a an employee owned company.

There is a piece of legislation in Washington, House resolution 3105, which is promotion of more employee ownership, making the pathways to it more accessible for businesses considering succession planning.

It is out there, and we are advocating for the bill so that we can bring more employee ownership to bear.

Because for us, me personally and my family, it has created pathways to security for retirement and presented opportunity.

You know, the diversity of American business is one of the really big, important things about what's happening here and what we're seeing during this bus tour.

You know, the reality is that you can't have a top down system that says, you know, only big business or only favored businesses get support from the government.

Instead, what you want to have is a system that allows for you and I or anyone else to to innovate and to offer new solutions to compete, to solve problems for people.

And so that's really the heart of free enterprise.

And we're really excited to be highlighting that on this trip.

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chamber visited three Kentucky businesses Parnell's Old Folk Sausage and Simpsonville Country Boy Brewing and Georgetown and Bowers Candies in Lawrenceburg.