I’ve been in a number of fights over the years. Fighting the federal government over a wheelchair is one fight I will always remember. There were also fights for resources for people like my mom, whose memory was eroding so fast she couldn’t remember how to crochet. There were scuffles that almost became fights, like when my sister tried to wring my neck.
There were fights that I lost, like trying to secure a permanent fix for young men and women who had only known the United States of America as their home, from being deported. And there were fights where the other side denied there was even a fight, like the fight against climate science deniers. Most of these fights stemmed from a complicated domestic policy problem.
I believe the way to solve problems is to empower people, not the government. And the way to help people up the economic ladder is through free markets, not socialism. There are so many ways that quality of life for Americans has improved over the last fifty years. Just one example: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in the fifty-year period from 1969 to 2019, when adjusted for cost of living, real median family income has increased 48 percent.
Whether you want limited government or bigger government, government should be working on your behalf. Government should give people the opportunity to make their own decisions about where they go to school, where they want to live, which doctors they want to visit, what business they want to start, and, ultimately, who they want to be.
Having a handful of elites in a faraway capital deciding your future just doesn’t work, because our global economy is complicated. Individual demand for goods and services changes billions of times around the world every minute, while the supply to meet these demands based on resource availability is constantly in flux.
No matter how good their intentions, a handful of government bureaucrats or socialist cooperatives—a socialist idea for reimagining a company where everyone who works at the company makes decisions for that company—are incapable of managing such a dynamic system.
Our economy is based on supply and demand. It is democratic and capitalist. It is market-oriented and entrepreneurial. It offers incentives for working families in labor as well as management. It rewards work, investment, saving, and productivity. Our system is designed for you, not the government, to have the power to make the decisions on how you achieve your goals.
However, not everyone has benefited. A Pew Research Center study conducted in 2020 showed that while there was more movement up the income ladder than down the income ladder, the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016.
Barriers and structural obstacles like systemic racism and gender discrimination haven’t been eradicated, and these impediments are contributing factors to income inequality that prevent some people from advancing his or her economic position. These realities are fueling a trend where a growing chorus of people are trying to delegitimize our economic, political, and social systems by claiming those who haven’t benefited from these systems are the norm rather than an unfortunate exception that should be given special attention and focus.
Because of this trend, some folks are looking for ways to replace our political, economic, and social systems with something new. The Democratic Party is increasingly being seduced by the disastrous concept of socialism, which over the past one hundred years has been attempted more than two dozen times around the world and failed miserably. Even the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the U.S., admit that no country has fully instituted Democratic Socialism.
In Democratic Socialism, factors of production—inputs needed to produce a good or service like land, labor, entrepreneurship, and capital—are owned and controlled by the workers and consumers affected by the institution. This social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives, which are in essence different versions of unions.
Democratic Socialists believe that vital goods and services, including energy, housing, and transit, but not limited to these industries, would be managed through centralized planning (a group of government bureaucrats), while a free-market system based on social ownership would distribute consumer products. German philosopher Karl Marx, who developed his own eponymous social and political philosophy, considered socialism a transition phase between capitalism and communism.
Over the centuries, various forms of socialism have inspired people because of its utopian vision of a better society. However, it has always flopped because it’s impractical. Socialism ignores human nature. It ignores the fact that humans are driven by self-interest.
I don’t care who you are or where you live, you have the same goals as everybody else—to put food on your table, a roof over your head, and ensure that the people you love are happy and healthy. I saw this reality throughout the diverse communities I represented in Congress, and I saw this to be true in all the exotic locales where I lived and worked around the world.
Democratic capitalism has contributed to making the U.S. the most powerful country to ever exist. To help those who haven’t benefited, we shouldn’t upend our economic, social, and political system to the detriment of those who have benefited or are benefiting. This would be the ultimate example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To help those who haven’t benefited, our domestic policy should pay special attention to these Americans and ensure they are empowered to take advantage of the same opportunities as those who have moved up the economic ladder. Let’s keep the baby and just get rid of the bathwater.
This shouldn’t be hard. I learned the principle that could help us solve this conundrum when I was a kid.
In the summers, my mom kicked my brother, sister, and me out of the house when the game show The Price Is Right ended at ten A.M., and we weren’t allowed back inside until it started getting dark. Those summer days usually started with me walking over to the house of one of my neighborhood partners-in-crime, Michael Rodriguez, because he was always game for whatever I wanted to do, even when his mom told him he couldn’t. One summer, Michael asked me to go to some camp his church was putting on. I had no interest in interrupting my usual summer shenanigans to go to church camp, and even as a kid I didn’t like doing things I didn’t want to do.
My mother found out about the invitation and chastised me for not doing something Michael wanted to do because he always joined me, even if it got him in trouble. Since I was a momma’s boy, a good shaming by my dear mother always changed my behavior, so I went to church camp.
I was immediately angry with Michael because this camp wasn’t all fun and games. We had to attend lectures. What the hell kind of camp was this? Summer is for playing, not sitting in a classroom. But in one of these classes I didn’t want to be in, we were taught a story from Matthew 25 verse 40.
It was Judgment Day, and the Son of God was on his heavenly throne. All the nations are gathered before him, and Jesus is rendering his verdict on whether folks are getting into heaven or not. There are only two outcomes—salvation or damnation. Jesus sorts the crowd and puts some folks on his right and the rest on his left. He turns to the folks on his right and says—and I’m paraphrasing here—come on in y’all, you made it.
Jesus tells the folks on his right the reason for his decision. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
The folks on his right were happy, but they asked the Lord, when did we do all this for you? Jesus’s reply was simple. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
The “least of our brothers and sisters” deserve the freedom to chase opportunities so they can grow and achieve progress. Everyone is anxious about their lives and their futures. Before the economic chaos of the pandemic, nearly 40 percent of Americans said they would struggle with an unexpected four-hundred-dollar expense.
Throughout my congressional career, I saw how this financial uncertainty was exacerbated, especially for the “least of our brothers and sisters,” by the rising costs of healthcare, childcare, senior care, and education, as well as anxiety over preparing for the economy of the future, the inability to get immigration right, and the increasing grim effects of climate change.
During my terms in Congress, I was on the frontlines for many of the battles to respond to Americans’ concerns—school reform with the Every Student Succeeds Act, because children were still being left behind; my controversial vote against the repeal and replacement of Obamacare; efforts by colleagues and me toward an immigration solution that meets the needs of our economy; the first revision of the tax code in three decades that included provisions to help families deal with the rising costs of childcare; the controversy over President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords; and the early debates over the Green New Deal.
Prosperity is a product of empowering people, not the government. And the best first step to empower a person? Ensure he or she can take care of his or her health.