American Dreams Read Free Page A

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.

Chapter One
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THE AMERICAN DREAM, DOWNSIZED
    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