American Dreams (21 page)

—Senator Marco Rubio November 2014

First and foremost, I thank my Lord, Jesus Christ, whose willingness to suffer and die for my sins will allow me to enjoy eternal life.

One of the things I've learned from writing two books is that they only come together through the hard work and dedication of many talented individuals. I'd like to thank the people in this book who shared their hopes and their struggles in their pursuit of the American Dream.

Once again, I was fortunate to have my very wise lawyer, Bob Barnett, and the outstanding team at Sentinel handling the publication of
American Dreams
. Thanks to Adrian Zackheim; Kary Perez; and especially to Niki Papadopoulos, who provided invaluable edits to the manuscript. I am grateful to Jessica Gavora for helping me craft and organize the manuscript, interview the people who shared their life stories and meet the various deadlines on time.

Thanks to the many scholars and policy experts whose writings, ideas and advice have helped shape my views on both domestic and foreign policy. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), in particular, has been a tremendous resource to me. I am grateful to its president, Arthur Brooks, and its stable of talented scholars, including James Pethokoukis, Andrew Biggs, Alan D. Viard, Andrew Kelly, Robert Doar, W. Bradford Wilcox, Michael Strain, Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Schneider.

I am also immensely indebted to the intellectual leaders of the “reform conservative” movement—Yuval Levin, Reihan Salam, Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru, and several of the above mentioned AEI scholars—whose innovative ideas are moving conservatism into the twenty-first century. I am also grateful to a number of policy experts for their creative ideas on welfare, health care, retirement security, tax and regulatory reform and higher education, including Oren Cass, Ron Haskins, Stuart Butler, Scott Winship, Jim Capretta, Chuck Blahous, Jason Fichtner, Glenn Hubbard, Doug Holtz-Eakin, Peter Wehner, Bob Stein, Marc Sumerlin, Andy Laperriere, former Senator Phil Gramm, David Burton, Stephen Moore, Bob Carroll, William McBride, Stephen Entin, Jason Delisle, Nina Rees, Neal McCluskey, George Leef and Richard Vedder. On national security and foreign policy, I am thankful for the wise advice and counsel from Elliott Abrams, Bob Kagan, Eric Edelman, James Carafano, Brian Hook, former Senator Jim Talent and Pete Hegseth.

Many thanks to the talented individuals on my Senate staff who helped me develop the legislative proposals I write about in this book: Cesar Conda, Sally Canfield, Scott Parkinson, Emily Bouck, J. R. Sanchez, Darren Achord, Sara Decker, Jon Baselice, Jamie Fly, Brian Walsh, Victor Cervino, Enrique Gonzalez and Gregg Nunziata. I am also grateful to Rob Noel, Todd Reid and Jessica Fernandez. Thanks to Heath Thompson, Todd Harris, Alberto Martinez, Alex Conant and Alex Burgos for their valuable comments on the manuscript.

I am indebted to my colleagues Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey for partnering with me on many of the legislative proposals I mention in this book. I am confident that we will eventually turn these solutions into realities.

Thanks to Norman Braman, not only for the advice and comments on the book, but for your friendship and wise advice to me over the years.

As ever, I am grateful to my family—Jeanette, my wife, and our children, Amanda, Daniella, Anthony and Dominick—for their continued love, understanding and support.

CHAPTER ONE

1
. Scott Winship, “Our Misleading Obsession with Growth Rates,”
Breakthrough Journal
, Winter 2013.

2
. “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class,” Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends, August 22, 2012.

3
. “The Low-Wage Recovery and Growing Inequality,” National Employment Law Project, August 2012.

4
. Tyler Cowen,
Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
(New York: Dutton, 2013), p. 38.

5
. “The Number of Jobs Grows, but Not Labor Force Participation,”
Washington Post
, June 6, 2014.

6
. Nicholas Eberstadt, “America's Increasingly Irrelevant ‘Unemployment Rate,'” RealClearMarkets.com, May 14, 2014.

7
. OECD Skills Outlook 2013.

8
. W. Bradford Wilcox, “Marriage Makes Our Children Richer—Here's Why,”
The Atlantic
, October 29, 2013
.

9
. Ron Haskins, “Getting Ahead in America,”
National Affairs
, Fall 2009.

10
. Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill,
Creating an Opportunity Society
(Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009).

11
. Eric Morath, “Who Benefits from a Higher Minimum Wage?,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 12, 2014.

CHAPTER TWO

1
. Joshua Green, “The Incredible Stair-Climbing, Self-Parking, Amphibious Wheelchair,”
Bloomberg Businessweek
, June 5, 2014.

2
. “Not Open for Business,”
The Economist
, October 12, 2013.

3
. Ben Goad and Julian Hattem, “Regulation Nation: Obama Oversees Expansion of the Regulatory State,”
The Hill
, August 19, 2013.

4
. “Not Open for Business,”
The Economist
, October 12, 2013.

5
. Tim Devaney, “Obama Regs Have Cost $500B, Report Finds,”
The Hill
, January 8, 2014.

6
. Avik Roy, “Marco Rubio's Important New Proposal for Containing the Costs of Federal Regulation,”
Forbes
, March 10, 2014.

7
. Grant Smith, “U.S. Seen as Biggest Oil Producer After Overtaking Saudi Arabia,” Bloomberg, July 4, 2014.

8
. Edward L. Morse, “Welcome to the Revolution,”
Foreign Affairs
, May/June 2014.

CHAPTER THREE

1
. “The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later,” House Budget Committee Report, March 3, 2014.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Hope Yen, “Nation's Poor at 49.7M, Higher Than Official Rate,” Associated Press, November 6, 2013.

4
. James Pethokoukis, “70 Percent of Americans Born at the Bottom Never Reach the Middle,” American Enterprise Institute, July 18, 2014.

5
. James Pethokoukis, “The U.S. Can Have More Economic Mobility Than Canada, Right?,” American Enterprise Institute, August 15, 2013.

6
. Keith Hall, Testimony Before the Senate Budget Committee, April 1, 2014.

7
. Ibid.

8
. “Rural Poverty and Well-Being,” United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, February 28, 2014.

9
. “Broke in the 'Burbs,”
The Economist
, July 20, 2013.

10
. Ibid.

11
. “Making Work Search Smart—Utah, 2013,” NextJob.

12
. “Making Work Search Smart—Mississippi, 2013,” NextJob.

13
. OECD Employment Outlook 2005.

14
. Jake Grovum, “States Resist Food Stamp Cuts,”
Stateline
, Pew Charitable Trusts, March 17, 2014.

15
. Robert Doar, “Ten Welfare-Reform Lessons,”
National Review
, April 14, 2014.

16
. “The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later,” House Budget Committee Report, March 3, 2014.

CHAPTER FOUR

1
. “The Rising Cost of Not Going to College,” Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends, February 11, 2014.

2
. Sophie Quinton and Stephanie Stamm, “What Happened to the High School Class of 2004?”
National Journal
, January 27, 2014.

3
. “The Rising Cost of Not Going to College,” Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends, February 11, 2014.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Ron Haskins, “Getting Ahead in America,”
National Affairs
, Fall 2009.

6
. Andrew Kelly, “Why Conservatives Should Crack the College Conundrum,”
Forbes
, March 26, 2014.

7
. Richard Vedder and Christopher Denhart, “How the College Bubble Will Pop,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 8, 2014.

8
. “Tuition and Fee and Room and Board Charges Over Time, 173–74 Through 2013–14, Selected Years,” College Board, Trends in Higher Education, 2014.

9
. Stuart M. Butler, “The Coming Higher-Ed Revolution,”
National Affairs
, Winter 2012.

10
. “Fact Sheet on the President's Plan to Make College More Affordable: A Better Bargain for the Middle Class,” WhiteHouse.gov, August 22, 2013.

11
. Stuart M. Butler, “The Coming Higher-Ed Revolution,”
National Affairs
, Winter 2012.

12
. Phil Izzo, “Congratulations to the Class of 2014, Most Indebted Ever,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 16, 2014.

13
. Sam Frizell, “Student Loans Are Ruining Your Life. Now They're Ruining the Economy Too,”
Time
, February 26, 2014.

14
. Phil Izzo, “Congratulations to the Class of 2014, Most Indebted Ever,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 16, 2014.

15
. Jon Marcus, “New Analysis Shows Problematic Boom in Higher Ed Administrators,” New England Center for Investigative Reporting, February 6, 2014.

16
. Andrew Martin, “Building a Showcase Campus, Using an I.O.U.,”
New York Times
, December 13, 2012.

17
. “Consumer Credit—G.19,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, May 7, 2014.

18
. Phyllis Korkki, “The Ripple Effects of Rising Student Debt,”
New York Times
, May 24, 2014.

19
. Meta Brown and Sydnee Caldwell, “Young Student Loan Borrowers Retreat from Housing and Auto Markets,” Liberty Street Economics, NY Fed blog, April 17, 2013.

20
. Neil Irwin, “Why the Housing Market Is Still Stalling the Economy,”
New York Times
, April 24, 2014.

21
. Richard Kim, “The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street,”
The Nation
, November 21, 2011.

22
. Anthony P. Carnevale and Ban Cheah, “Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings,” Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University, 2013.

23
. Dan Alexander, “Big Business Bets on Education, Turning Factories and Corporate Campuses into Schools,”
Forbes
, December 9, 2013.

24
. Matthew Philips, “Welders, America Needs You,”
Bloomberg Businessweek
, March 20, 2014.

25
. “Higher Ed's Illusions,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 27, 2014.

26
. Andrew Kelly, “Tomorrow's Online Schools,”
National Review
, October 28, 2013.

27
. Ibid.

28
. Devon Haynie, “Online Education Isn't Always Cheap,”
U.S. News & World Report
, August 28, 2013.

CHAPTER FIVE

1
. See the graphic for yourself here: www.census.gov/dataviz/visualiza tions/019/.

2
. Derek Thompson, “Map: The Astonishing Concentration of High-Income Earners Around Washington, D.C.,”
The Atlantic
, December 17, 2013.

3
. James Pethokoukis, “A Reply to the
Wall Street Journal
's Kim Strassel on Taxes and Reform Conservatism,” American Enterprise Institute, June 25, 2014.

4
.
Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class
, YGNetwork.org.

5
. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care,” Washington D.C., September 9, 2009, www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-a-Joint-Session-of-Congress-on-Health-Care.

6
. Louise Radnofsky, “Premiums Rise at Big Insurers, Fall at Small Rivals Under Health Law,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 18, 2014.

7
. Ken Alltucker, “Health Net to Raise Affordable Care Act Rates by Nearly 14 Percent,”
Arizona Republic
, June 17, 2014.

8
. Ben Sutherly, “Obamacare Premiums to Rise 13 Percent, Ohio Agency Says,”
Columbus Dispatch
, May 30, 2014.

9
. Byron York, “Why Obamacare ‘Good News' Applies Only to the Poor,”
Washington
Examiner
, June 19, 2014.

10
. Ibid.

11
. “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024,” Congressional Budget Office, February 4, 2014.

12
. Lyndsey Layton, “In New Orleans, Major School District Closes Traditional Public Schools for Good,”
Washington Post
, May 28, 2014.

CHAPTER SIX

1
. Angela Johnson, “76% of Americans Are Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck,” CNN Money, June 24, 2013.

2
. Nancy Hellmich, “Retirement: A Third Have Less Than $1,000 Put Away,”
USA Today
, April 1, 2014.

3
. Nari Rhee, “Race and Retirement Insecurity in the United States,” National Institute on Retirement Security, December 2013.

4
. Jeanne Meister, “Job Hopping Is the ‘New Normal' for Millennials: Three Ways to Prevent a Human Resource Nightmare,”
Forbes
, August 14, 2012.

5
. David C. John, “Pursuing Universal Retirement Security Through Automatic IRAs and Account Simplification,” Testimony to the House Committee on Ways and Means, April 17, 2012.

6
. “Retirement Statistics,” Statistic Brain, January 1, 2014.

7
. “Merrill Lynch Study Finds 72 Percent of People Over the Age of 50 Want to Work in Retirement,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 4, 2014.

8
. I recommend this comprehensive treatment of Social Security reform by Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute: Andrew G. Biggs, “A New Vision for Social Security,”
National Affairs
, Summer 2013.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Ibid.

11
. “Life Expectancy for Social Security,” Social Security Administration.

12
. “CMS Office of the Actuary Projects Modest Health Spending Growth,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, September 18, 2013.

13
. “Survey: Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Earns High Marks 10 Years After Enactment,” Medicare Today, September 17, 2013.

14
. “Paul Ryan's Medicare Voucher Plan Improves with Each Pass,” Bloomberg, March 20, 2012.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1
. Ron Haskins, “Marriage, Parenthood, and Public Policy,”
National Affairs
, Spring 2014.

2
. Isabel V. Sawhill, “How Marriage and Divorce Impact Economic Opportunity,” Brookings Institute, May 6, 2014.

3
. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the U.S.,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 19843, January 2014.

4
. James Pethokoukis, “Why Intact Families Are Key to Shared American Prosperity,” American Enterprise Institute, June 25, 2014.

5
. James Pethokoukis, “Can Anything Really Be Done About Family Breakdown and American Poverty? A Q&A with Brad Wilcox,” American Enterprise Institute, March 11, 2014.

6
. Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch, “Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 20, 2014.

7
. Robert Doar, “Back to Work: How to Improve the Prospects of Low-Income Americans,” Statement Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, February 25, 2014.

8
. Alia Malek, “Dead Broke, Not Deadbeat: Baltimore Rethinks Welfare Policy,” Al Jazeera America, January 15, 2014.

9
. Annie Lowrey, “MTV's ‘16 and Pregnant,' Derided by Some, May Resonate as a Cautionary Tale,”
New York Times
, January 13, 2014.