SEN DAVE McCORMICK: Trump Accounts give all Americans a stake in prosperity

Last week, my friend Senator John Fetterman and I stood on a court at the 6th Man Center - a Philadelphia Youth Basketball facility in North Philly - watching dozens of children crowd around their phones grinning. They weren't watching a video or playing a game. They were looking for investment accounts in their own names - accounts that give them a real stake in America's future and become available on July 4.

Capitalism is the greatest engine of prosperity and human flourishing the world has ever known. No economic system has lifted more people out of poverty, rewarded more work and innovation, or created more opportunity for ordinary people to build better lives. But to preserve that system - and the prosperity it makes possible - more Americans must have a real stake in its success.

Today, too many Americans are helping build this country's future without sharing meaningfully in its upside. Since the global financial crisis, the top one percent's share of the nation's wealth has climbed from about 27 percent to 32 percent. That same one percent now owns roughly half of all the stock in America; the bottom half of households owns about one percent. As artificial intelligence and other new technologies transform our economy, this trend will only worsen - it's both indefensible and politically unsustainable.

For decades, Washington's answer to this dilemma was always the same: stand up a new agency, build a bureaucracy to run it, and redistribute hard-earned money through a system riddled with waste and fraud. It deepened dependence on government, and still the American Dream slipped further out of reach.

The Working Families Tax Cuts Act - signed into law last July 4 - chose another road: not redistribution from above, but incentives for Americans to invest directly in one another. A $1,000 seed fund is the first rung of a ladder every American child can climb - and gives parents, family and friends, employers, and philanthropists a vehicle to invest directly in the next generation.

That is the magic of tax-advantaged compounding: a $1,000 investment at birth, combined with just $10 added to the account each week, could grow to nearly $400,000 by the time that child reaches my age of 60.

Across the country, six million children have been signed up, but more must follow, including the 1.4 million eligible kids in Pennsylvania.

Abraham Lincoln called us to be dedicated to the unfinished work of liberty. That work continues in every generation. On July 4, as Trump Accounts launch nationwide, we will help make the American Dream more than just an inheritance of words for the next generation, but also a concrete stake in America's promise. And they give the rest of us a chance to invest in the future of America's next generation.

More will need to be done. But programs such as these - voluntary, guided by incentives, circumventing government bureaucracy, and which provide opportunity, not entitlement - are an excellent starting point.