For the first time in recent memory, two chambers of commerce in Martin County welcomed a United States senator to address their members.
Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., spoke Wednesday to a special joint luncheon of business leaders and members of the Palm City and Stuart/Martin County Chambers of Commerce.
LeMieux was appointed to former Sen. Mel Martinez's unexpectedly vacant seat by his longtime friend and political ally, Gov. Charlie Crist.
About 100 chamber members from the area sat around tables at Piper's Landing Club House in Palm City. Joe Catrambone, president and CEO of the Stuart/Martin County Chamber of Commerce, said he had hoped to see closer to 250 people.
"Unfortunately, our attendance is a little low and I'm a bit disappointed," said Catrambone, explaining that both chambers already had their monthly functions and this event was planned at the last minute.
Still, LeMieux received a warm welcome when he arrived, diving right into telling his audience of the problems he sees in Washington.
"The thing that really amazes me most," he said, "is the way your government misspends your money."
The Congressional Budget Office recently released a report showing that Washington had spent $1.3 trillion more than it took in last year. LeMieux tried to put that into perspective using land area comparisons.
"If you take one dollar bills and line them up like carpet a million dollars would cover the size of two football fields," he said. "A billion would cover an area the size of Key West -- about 3.4 square miles. And a trillion dollars would cover the state of Rhode Island, twice!"
LeMieux also focused his remarks on economic uncertainty facing all of the business owners in the room. He railed on the recently passed financial reform and President Barack Obama's health-care legislation.
"Businesses don't know how to plan for health care because it's 2,000 pages, it's going to have tens of thousands of pages of regulation that go with it, and there's all this uncertainty of how it's going to be implemented," he said.
Taxes are also creating uncertainty for businesses. Earlier this month Congress went on break without finishing the budget, which means no one knows for sure what they'll be paying in taxes starting in a little more than two months.
"So we have businesses frozen in their tracks. They don't know what the playing field is going to be and they won't hire. Which just hurts our economy even more."
Near the end of a brief question-and-answer session with the senator, Tammy Simoneau, the executive director of the Economic Council for Martin County, asked LeMieux, "When are the million people coming?"
Last year, before he was senator, LeMieux predicted 1 million people would move into the sleepy Martin County by 2029. He was blasted by the local media, the business community, the County Commission majority -- practically everybody -- who pointed out that no way could that happen, that year after year the county's annual growth rate hovered at around 1 percent.
"I thought some day there'd be a million people in Martin County. Boy, did I get in trouble for that," he told the audience. "I said 2030 at the time, but now it certainly doesn't look like that."
LeMieux said he was only trying to urge people to plan for growth.
The appointed senator is expected to finish his term at the end of the year. But one audience member asked him if he is planning on running to replace Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012.
"I'm thinking about it," he said. "I have a jury I'll have to convince at home, with the jury foreman as Mrs. LeMieux."
Lane Wright can be reached at lane@sunshinestatenews.com or 561-247-1063.
