American Dreams (2 page)

For our part, conservatives have also failed to address the challenges of the new economy—but there are promising signs that this is changing. As the opposition party, we have typically responded to attempts to build an ever bigger, ever more intrusive government by calling for less government and less spending. These are essential and nonnegotiable goals for conservatism. But, as conservative writer and editor Yuval Levin has pointed out, absent a broader governing agenda, this response leaves the impression that all conservatives care about is a less expensive welfare state, one that costs fewer of the 1 percent's tax dollars. This response neatly sets up a debate that the left is all too happy for the American people to hear: liberals, who care about people like you, versus conservatives, who don't.

To their credit, Levin and other thinkers and policy makers on the right—particularly those at the American Enterprise Institute—have begun to move conservatives away from fixating on what we are against and instead toward thinking about what we are for. It is difficult work. America's economic and cultural problems are serious and complex. But conservatives come to this effort with a distinct advantage: We are not the party of government. We are not the party wedded to the status quo ideas and the Washington interest groups that are failing Americans today. We don't need to abandon our faith in free enterprise, federalism and limited government to find solutions for middle-class Americans. In fact, our principles are the necessary supports for such an agenda. We need only to find innovative and creative ways to apply these principles to real people's lives.

The American Dream may not survive another four years of outdated, status quo leadership. America is in dire need of a new direction, a true break with the ineffectual liberal policies of the last century. We need a clear vision forward that puts opportunity over cronyism, work over dependency and the health of the American family over all. America needs a conservative reform agenda.

This book is my attempt to construct such an agenda, told through the voices of the real people most in need of help today. Through the stories of an ambitious small-business man, a struggling single mother, an out-of-work and in-debt college graduate, among others, I focus on the three central elements to the achievement of the American Dream: equal opportunity, economic security and family. These are the American virtues that have always defined the dream, and they are the ones most threatened today. Americans believe, with increasing reason, that the equal opportunity to work and to succeed that our nation has always promised has been lost in a system rigged to favor the wealthy and well connected. Economic security, which used to be possible to achieve through a high school education and hard work, is no longer within reach of many families. And the family itself—always both the means and the ends of the American Dream—is struggling as never before.

Now is not the time to downgrade the American Dream. Now is the time to rescue it. Despite the hard times so many American families are experiencing, there is reason for great optimism. America is still the place my parents were drawn to in 1956; it is still a country where people can achieve their dreams. We can restore the American Dream and expand it to reach more people than ever before. But to do so, we must set out a new direction that gives us a government with less debt and less power, an economy with more stable middle-class jobs, and families healthy and secure enough to achieve their dreams.

The challenges before us are formidable, but before we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we need to remember the sacrifices that brought us to this point. Every generation of Americans before us has been asked to take bold and difficult steps to preserve what makes us special. Reforming our entitlements will be difficult, yes. But does it really compare with defeating the Nazis or eliminating Jim Crow? Imagine if our parents and grandparents hadn't risen to those challenges. Think about how different our lives would be.

When I was in college and then later in law school, my parents wanted me to focus on my studies. They didn't want me working and going to school part-time. So I lived at home. My father worked as a bartender well into his seventies, long past the time he should have retired. Many of the banquets he worked were on Friday and Saturday nights. So many late nights I recall hearing the jingle of his keys at the door, well past midnight, as he returned from another ten-hour day at work.

I didn't fully appreciate it then, but I know now that the sound at the door wasn't just the sound of keys. It was the sound of the unfulfilled dreams of my father's youth. It was the sound of a father whose entire life was now about making sure I would never have to go through what he went through. It was the sound of his American Dream.

This story is not mine alone. It is the story of a young mother who dreams of something better for her daughters. It is the story of small-business owners struggling to survive in a system rigged against them. It is the story of a young woman who rises from homelessness and abuse to become a teacher.

Hearing their stories has given me a sobering glimpse of the human toll that our failed response to the changed economy is having on American families. But it has also given me hope. It has convinced me that, despite our many differences, we are more united than our politics would lead you to believe. We are all the descendants of immigrants and slaves who refused to accept the limits of the Old World. They were men and women who took great risks and paid a great price to earn a better life. This is who we come from. Their blood runs in our veins.

No one book, no one man or woman, can restore the American Dream. But a movement, focusing its principles on creative and innovative solutions for American families, can provide the starting point. And a people, eager to be more than wards of government—eager to achieve their own American Dreams—can turn those solutions into realities.

I believe deeply in the conservative reform proposals presented in these pages. But what they seek to achieve—a rising, striving America for all of us—isn't partisan. There isn't a Republican Dream and a Democratic Dream. There is only one American Dream. Before us lies the chance not just to restore it, but to bring it within reach of more people than ever before. This is our chance to claim our heritage as a people who always leave behind a nation better than the one left to them.

My grandparents and parents kept the dream alive. So did yours. Now it's our turn.

 

J
ose's dad used to tell him, “You don't drown by falling in water. You drown by staying in water.” So when his accountant embezzled from his architecture business he didn't dwell on the fact that he was the victim of a crime. He didn't seek revenge. The accountant was a mother of three—three kids who needed her—so Jose didn't press for jail time. He just wanted restitution.

The court awarded him that restitution, but when the recession hit and Jose's firm went under, he faced his employees and took responsibility for the failure. The buck stopped with him. When you talk to him about it today, he tells you, unbidden, that he wishes he saw more of that in Washington.

At forty-one, he has lost his business, and with a wife and two kids to support, Jose has had to start his life over again. He's had to go back to school to get his master's degree, which he hopes will give him an edge in a competitive market. At the same time, he works full-time, leads the Boy Scout troop at his church and worries about the burden that puts on his wife, Lisa, who manages to work part-time while taking point with their eleven-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.

Adding to his troubles is the fact that grad school is expensive. A residential program, where he would sit in a classroom with other students, was out of the question. Jose managed to find a more affordable program—one of the few distance learning master's in architecture programs in the country—out of state. He takes his classes online, but once a month he has to travel 1,750 miles round-trip to meet with his professors. He estimates he already owes $50,000 to $60,000 in student loans and he has no idea how he's going to pay them off, but he wants more for his family, so he'll find a way.

Jose and Lisa are living, breathing refutations of one of the most unfortunate ideas to gain currency recently: the notion that Americans have somehow changed, that there is now a large number of us who would rather depend on government than work.

This simply isn't true. Of course, there will always be some who would rather get a handout than a hand up. But the vast majority of Americans, like Jose and Lisa, are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. The flip side of that argument, however, is equally offensive. It's the idea that if you're successful—even if you're just ambitious—you don't have yourself and your hard work to thank; you have government to thank. Perhaps the most famous articulation of this view came in the summer before the 2012 election, when President Obama told a campaign audience in Virginia, “If you've got a business, you didn't build that.”

Government can play a role in our success, of course. The rule of law, infrastructure, access to quality education and a pro-growth tax and regulatory code help create the environment for prosperity. This is the proper and important role of government in making free enterprise work. But what President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other liberals believe goes well beyond this limited role. They believe that government doesn't just create the environment for prosperity; they believe it is its primary driver. And they believe that the one thing struggling Americans need or want most is a government check.

In this view, the government safety net isn't a temporary bridge to a better life but a permanent way of life. Politically, this can be a compelling agenda. When people lament the quality of our schools, it can be an effective talking point to say how much you want to spend on education, as opposed to empowering parents with more choices. And when the struggles of people like Jose and Lisa come up, it can be a rewarding position during an election to propose to spend money to lower interest rates on student loans or to offer government-subsidized health insurance, rather than encourage innovation and competition to bring prices down.

The problem with this approach, however, is that in the end it just makes Americans feel better while they're clinging to a lower rung of the economic ladder. It doesn't help them rise. Like a record number of Americans during the Obama presidency, Lisa and Jose considered government assistance when the recession hit and their business failed. For a while, they weren't sure they were going to be able to keep their house. Jose is grateful the help is available. But what he really wants is to get his degree and be able to provide for himself and his family. He is frustrated that the assistance he gets doesn't help him do that. What's more, he sees government tipping the scales
against
his success. He used to dream of starting his own business again after getting his degree, but these days he's not so sure.

“The truth is, right now I am very cautious about embarking on that journey again,” says Jose. “I don't believe that the rules are on my side to succeed.” A few years after his business failed, he and Lisa tried to start another business, but the cost of insurance and benefits forced them to, as he says, “1099” their employees—bring them on as independent contractors, without tax withholding or benefits. Since then, the prospects for businesspeople like Jose and Lisa have only gotten worse.

The regulations placed on small-business owners have grown so burdensome that Jose now finds himself tempted by the idea that he might be better off working for someone else for the rest of his life rather than try to build something of his own. “I have no idea what's being mandated or what problems we could run into,” he says. “How can anybody move forward with blind faith?”

Among the challenges people like Jose now face are the realities of a new economy that is fundamentally different from the one his parents—and my parents—encountered when they came to America decades ago. The opportunity to better yourself no matter who you are is something that has appealed to Jose about America since he came here as a child. But now, like too many Americans, Jose feels that, even though he is working hard, that sense of limitless opportunity is slipping away. “The American Dream is kids doing better than their parents,” he says. “I look around and I really feel like we're going backwards.”

Americans still want to work, achieve and get ahead. Liberals have failed to adequately appreciate this, and conservatives have failed to adequately support it. What America needs now is a conservative movement that understands the challenges people like Jose and Lisa face, and offers bold and relevant ideas to help them thrive in a changed economy.

The America my parents came to in 1956 was a place where it was possible for two people with grade school educations and jobs in the service sector to have a car, buy a home and send their kids to college. As a maid and a bartender, my parents did all these things. The world was recovering from World War II and America was unchallenged in its manufacturing and economic strength. The period from the late 1940s through the early 1970s saw the mean family income double for the rich, the middle class and the poor.
1
Veterans were returning from war and going to college on the GI Bill. Whether they went to college or not, Americans were getting jobs in expanding industries, buying homes and going to Miami on vacation. My family and I were the beneficiaries.

Today, those years of growth and shared prosperity seem like ancient history. Something has happened to the American economy and the American Dream that goes beyond the usual boom and bust, recession and recovery of the business cycle. Something structural has shifted—something that is upending the lives and diminishing the futures of millions.

After decades of growing incomes for the middle class, the years between 2000 and 2011 were what the Pew Research Center calls a “lost decade.” In those years, middle-class Americans made less money, had more debt and had less wealth—in fact, for the first time since World War II, the middle class actually shrank in size. Median income fell by 5 percent and median wealth—the amount of a family's assets minus their debt—dropped a tragic 28 percent. For the poorest Americans, net worth plunged an astounding 48 percent.
2

For most Americans, wages are stagnant. Old jobs have been outsourced or automated. The jobs that are available have changed, and the skills needed to fill those jobs have changed. Middle-class Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, juggling bill payments to stay one step ahead of debt collection agencies. Saving for retirement is barely manageable; saving for college is impossible.

Some call it the “hollowing out of the middle class.” Others call it the “income gap.” Whatever you call it, the number of American families who can call themselves middle class is shrinking as the jobs, the skills and the habits that are the keys to the American Dream have shrunk as well. And at the same time the middle class has been shrinking, the share of Americans at either end of the income spectrum—the high earners and the low earners—has grown.

Almost nine million jobs were lost during the recession, and of those, a full 60 percent were middle-class jobs in occupations like construction, manufacturing, insurance, real estate and information technology. The jobs that have come back since the recession officially ended, in contrast, are overwhelmingly in low-wage occupations. A full 58 percent of the newly created jobs pay less than around $13.50 an hour.
3
The new jobs are in areas such as food service and retail sales, personal and home care aides, laborers and freight workers. The result is that the period
after
the official end of the recession in June 2009 has been
worse
for the wages of American workers than the actual recession. The wages of the typical worker fell more than twice as much between June 2009 and June 2011 than they did during the recession—6.7 percent compared with 3.2 percent. Add it all up and median income in 2011 was 8 percent lower than in 2007.
4

Even more frightening is the record decline in the number of Americans who are working at all. Participation in the labor force is so low today that the traditional unemployment rate is irrelevant because it counts only people who are looking for work—it doesn't account for the growing number of people who have simply given up on work altogether. Since 2008, according to the American Enterprise Institute's Nicholas Eberstadt, there has been “an obvious and almost total disconnect between the U.S. unemployment rate and the nation's work rate.” In May 2014, five years into the “recovery,” the percentage of Americans actually working or looking for a job had declined to 62.8 percent—the lowest level since 1979.
5
Most troublesome of all is that this decline of work is pronounced among men of prime working age. For every man between twenty-five and fifty-four who is looking for a job today, there are two who reportedly are not even looking.
6

Americans can and do argue about the reasons for the decline of work and the disappearance of good middle-class jobs. What is beyond dispute, however, is that the policies that have been put in place since the recession have done nothing to stop these disturbing trends and in some cases have made them worse. America has had recessions and depressions before, and our average recovery time has been around thirty-three months. Yet, as of November 2014, our “recovery” stood at sixty-five months—and counting. And the long-term projections for our economy don't give us any reason for hope.

Economists calculate something called the potential gross domestic product—the total amount of goods and services our economy would produce if it were operating at full employment without inflation, using all its resources and available labor. In 2014 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised—down—its estimate for our projected gross domestic product in 2017. Our best economists now believe that our economic output in two years will be 8.1 percent
less
than they initially thought it would be. That translates into a loss of $1.45 trillion in economic growth.

Taken together, these trends of declining jobs, declining work and declining economic growth amount to what some are calling the “new normal.” Previous economic downturns have been followed by robust recoveries that have lifted the middle class. Why isn't the same thing happening now? What is different about this time? And why, if we stay on the current course, does it appear our current troubles will become our new normal? The answer is that our current challenges are not being driven by a cyclical economic downturn. They are being driven by a dramatic restructuring and transformation of our economy. But our policies have not been restructured and transformed to address it.

The blame for this failure belongs to both parties in Washington D.C. Republicans haven't been creative or innovative enough in offering solutions. We have spent plenty of time opposing the president's agenda, but not nearly enough time applying our principles of limited government and free enterprise to the challenges of our time. Until just recently, not enough Republicans have focused on how a limited government could play a role in supporting the things we believe in—things like work, competition and family.