Reclaiming our Independence on America’s 250th Anniversary

I am glad to be back home in Philadelphia, where I was born during our nation’s Bicentennial year. Somehow, over the last fifty years of my life, our nation has lost its way. The love of money and the love of power have corrupted our politics, hollowed out communities, and divided us bitterly.

So I return to the place that first taught me what this country means. I return with the hope of transforming an unfair economic and political system that is working for a few, not the many, and reversing a bankrupt foreign policy that is dragging us into foreign wars. America’s 250th anniversary must mark the beginning of a national transformation that takes on a failed status quo. We need an economic, civic and moral renewal. Today I share a vision for economic independence of our citizens, an end to elite impunity, and American moral leadership as a friend to the world.

The first challenge of our nation is the massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a small capital class, which has deprived the hard-working families I grew up with a fair shot at economic security and success.

At the heart of our founding was the belief that citizens must be economically independent to be free. Noah Webster, who gave America its first dictionary, put it plainly: “A general and tolerably equal distribution of property is the whole basis of national freedom”. Thomas Jefferson warned that “Dependence begets subservience”.

That conviction has run through our history.

Lincoln understood that free labor requires the real chance for workers to gain economic independence by rising from hired hands to owners of their own tools and home.

Franklin Roosevelt echoed the same truth: “Necessitous men are not free men”.

What made our democracy exceptional was not just our Constitution, but our broad equality of conditions—a nation where ordinary people had the economic independence to govern themselves rather than depend on aristocrats or oligarchs.

That is how I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. My parents came to America from India believing that if they worked hard and gave back, this country would give their children a fair chance. And for my family it has, and I am filled with deep gratitude for America.

We lived on a street where an electrician, an HVAC technician, a nurse, a public school teacher, and a vice president at a big corporation were neighbors. The kids all played Little League together, watched Rocky movies and sat in the 700 level of the Vet, and went to the same public schools. I was an Indian American and a Hindu in a community that was overwhelmingly white. I learned early how to listen, adapt, and find common ground with people whose backgrounds and life experiences were different from my own. That has shaped the way I serve in Congress, where I’ve worked to build coalitions across ideological and geographic divides.

In Bucks, I had coaches who believed in me—they insisted I play, even if I batted ninth and the other team would yell, “Watch the bunt!” My teachers encouraged my love of civics and history. My neighbors made me feel that I belonged. Bucks County taught me that America is, at its best, a kind, decent, and welcoming place. It gave me the confidence to believe that I could connect with almost anyone in our sprawling, messy democracy. I learned in Bucks County that We the People means every American has an equal stake in our communities, in our economy, and yes, in our democracy.

I still remember writing letters to the editor and op-eds for the Bucks County Courier Times as a teenager. At fourteen, I imagined President George H. W. Bush might read what I wrote. Today I write pieces for the New York Times, and the President still doesn’t read them. But that youthful optimism mattered. It reflected a confidence that ordinary citizens had a voice, and that ideas mattered more than pedigree. That faith was nurtured in a county where I heard stories of our founding on countless school field trips, including how George Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night—in freezing weather, with soldiers who did not have shoes. I grew up proud of America, proud that a free people, with courage and conviction, could overcome impossible odds.

Yet even as I was growing up, I watched a darker story unfold. I saw the closure of Fairless Works, a steel plant, and the deindustrialization that hollowed out parts of Lower Bucks and communities across Pennsylvania. Good-paying jobs started to disappear. Main streets struggled. Families who had done everything right worried whether their children would not have the opportunities they had enjoyed. Today that anxiety is deeper. Young people wonder whether they will ever be able to get a good job or buy a house or pay the rent. Their families kept their end of the bargain, but America is no longer keeping ours.

As a member of Congress, I now represent Silicon Valley, where extraordinary innovation has created companies worth nearly $20 trillion within roughly fifty miles of my district—one third of the nation’s stock market value in my district. In just the last 20 years, America’s share of the global stock market has risen from about 40 percent to more than 60 percent. That is staggering. Yet at a time when we are creating more wealth than ever before, millions of hardworking Americans have little or no stake in that success.

I have lived both sides of the American story: the fading hope of shared prosperity in Bucks County and the staggering concentration of new wealth in Silicon Valley. No nation can long endure when opportunity is concentrated in one place while entire regions are hollowed out. We are living through a second Gilded Age.

That is why I have called for a new economic patriotism to make our highest mission the economic independence of every American family in every community. We need this country to work not just for the tech lords but for hard-working families like those in Lower Bucks. I see how the future economy is working for some, and I have a plan for how to make it work for everyone.

This means an industrial investment bank that provides grants and loans to small- and medium-sized manufacturers who make the things we currently import — and 1,000 new trade schools and tech institutes to prepare the working class for the careers of the future.

It means $25-plus jobs in the care economy—childcare, eldercare, and home care—along with free childcare and support for stay-at-home parents and the friends, family, and neighbors who provide care.

It means a Marshall Plan for America: a White House Economic Development Council that gives local counties grants to build a school, a community center, or a jobs program.

It means a living wage, worker bargaining, and, yes, employee ownership in profits.

It means free universal healthcare for every American through Medicare for All.

It means owning a home by 35—work seven years and you get the same deal as veterans: zero down payment and low-interest loans for your first house.

And it means tuition-free public college and real investment in public schools like the one I attended, so young Americans can get an excellent education without going into debt.

What I am calling for is a New Deal for the 21st century. Transformative change to make Americans successful and independent in a modern economy.

The richest nation in the world can pay for our new social contract by taxing the billionaires in my district and by stopping squandering our treasure on needless war!

But economic renewal alone is not enough. We must end elite impunity.

There cannot be one system of justice for ordinary Americans and another for the wealthy and powerful. Elite impunity is poisoning faith in our republic just as surely as economic inequality.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all are created equal. Thomas Jefferson called for “equal and exact justice to all men”. America was born in the rejection of aristocracy and privilege.

That is why the Epstein scandal shook the nation’s conscience this year. Thomas Massie and I built a bipartisan populist coalition to pass the historic Epstein Files Transparency Act, forcing the release of millions of documents on the sexual abuse of young girls. The deepest question was not only the horrific crimes. It was why the wealthy and powerful could buy a reprieve from justice.

The problem of elite impunity extends far beyond the Epstein class. Mark Zuckerberg and other technology executives cannot escape responsibility when they profit from algorithms that feed destructive content to children, driving depression and deep psychological harm. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, must face accountability for cutting food and medicine to the world’s poorest. It is simply not right that Jeff Bezos extracts the profits of a multi-trillion-dollar company for himself and his shareholders while taxpayers subsidize his underpaid workers who cannot afford food or housing. And today’s billionaires must not be allowed to buy our politicians by pouring millions into Super PACs and TV ads.

We need an agenda to end elite impunity. It requires politicians with the guts to take on the powers that be. That is why I am one of only ten members who refuse all PAC and lobbyist money, and why I have called for a constitutional amendment to outlaw Super PACs. If Congress will not act, we must go to the states, secure the support of two-thirds, and convene a convention. The mobilization of the states is what forced Congress to accept the direct election of senators. There is precedent.

We must also outlaw Zuckerberg’s algorithms that harm children and give every American the right to opt out of algorithms. We must subpoena Musk so he answers for his unconstitutional DOGE cuts. We must end taxpayer subsidies for Bezos and demand he pay his workers a living wage. And we need the full release of the Epstein files and actual prosecutions—just as other nations have held former princes, ambassadors, and prime ministers to account.

To earn back the trust of Americans and live up to our sacred principle of equality under the law, we need a government that will begin naming those in power who have abused their privilege to harm the American people—and the fortitude to bring them to justice.

A more just America must act justly in the world to keep our independence. Our nation was not founded to seek foreign wars or to impose our will on other peoples. Thomas Jefferson captured the vision in a simple but powerful phrase: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none”. Jefferson understood that America’s strength would not come from constant conflict abroad, but from the confidence of a free people building prosperity at home while respecting the rights of others. Our founders believed America should be strong enough to defend itself, but wise enough not to confuse power with perpetual war.

That same principle guided Franklin Roosevelt when he spoke of the Good Neighbor policy—a vision of an America that led through partnership, not domination; through example, not empire. FDR believed that lasting security comes when nations have the dignity of self-government and when America works with the world to build peace and prosperity. In the Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt affirmed “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”.

Today, we have moved away from the Jefferson-Roosevelt tradition. Donald Trump’s foreign policy is “might makes right”. He has launched strikes against Iran, leading to the unnecessary deaths of American service members and driving our food and gas prices up. He has ordered military actions against boats with fishermen in the Caribbean. He has threatened Cuba with blockades and regime change. And he has spoken of wiping civilizations off the face of the earth rather than building a safer world through American statesmanship.

A strong America is not measured by how many wars it starts or how many countries it threatens. Our power is greatest when we use it to prevent war and solve civilizations’ challenges. The world does not need an America that is feared; it needs an America that is trusted. We can defend our security without initiating foreign wars. We can lead without trying to control the destiny of other nations. It is time to restore an American foreign policy rooted in diplomacy, self-determination for all people, and peace. It is time for America to be a friend to the world again.

Philadelphia gave birth to a republic that rejected both kings and oligarchs. It declared that ordinary people—not the well-born, not the well-connected—could govern themselves if they remained economically independent, equal under the law, and free from the entanglements of foreign war. Alas, for fifty years we have drifted from that vision. Concentrated wealth has hollowed out the independence of working families. Elite impunity has eroded equality before the law. And a foreign policy of perpetual conflict has strained our independence and our moral standing. On the threshold of our 250th year, the choice before us is stark. We can continue managing decline, or we can be the generation that builds a multiracial democracy of genuine economic dignity—a more perfect union. In doing so, we can be a light to the world. That is the work of national renewal. That is the unfinished promise of this city. And that is the responsibility we now carry.