We can’t defund our way to prosperity. We need to support our schools, nurses and firefighters
At the dawn of what was billed as a new American "Golden Age," President Donald Trump stood before the nation and proclaimed, "The American Dream will soon be back and thriving like never before."
That was January 20, 2025. Now, just a few months into this new chapter, it's worth asking: What does a thriving American Dream actually require? It’s not built on speeches or slogans, but on the everyday systems that support working families — schools, hospitals, firehouses and other vital services that keep our communities strong and our local economies growing.
Take a walk through any thriving town or city in America. You will find not just businesses booming and cranes dotting the skyline. You'll find hospitals staffed by highly skilled nurses, public schools filled with ambitious children, public health departments tracking outbreaks before they spread and fire departments ready to respond within minutes.
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You'll also find community colleges and public universities acting as launch pads for young adults entering the workforce. These are not just services. They are the living, breathing organs of a healthy, functioning economy.
This isn’t just theory. It’s personal. My mother, a retired NICU nurse, spent decades caring for the smallest lives at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. She was a proud member of SEIU Local 1991. Like many Jamaican-American women in healthcare, she wasn’t just a registered nurse — she was a community builder, a public servant and the backbone of our neighborhood. Her union card didn’t just signify fair pay; it represented dignity, stability and a stake in America’s future.
Policymakers across the political spectrum often talk about revitalizing American industry and rebuilding the middle class. Many Americans — especially those in the political middle, who feel disconnected from the extremes of both parties — are simply looking for practical solutions. They’re not chasing culture wars or partisan fights; they want what works: good jobs, strong schools, and safe, stable communities.
But manufacturing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can’t build a factory in a town where the hospital has closed, the school is underfunded, the firehouse is short-staffed, and the technical college has shuttered because of federal budget cuts. Just ask any titan of industry.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 449,000 job openings in the manufacturing sector as of March 2025. These are real jobs that require real people with real skills. Yet, we lack the workforce to fill them. Why? Because we’ve spent the past decade underfunding the very institutions that grow, train and sustain that workforce.
One bipartisan bright spot is career and technical education (CTE). As a recent New York Times opinion piece by AFT President Randi Weingarten highlighted, CTE is having a moment. Bringing together leaders like Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and business leaders like Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, CTE could catalyze the kind of revitalization many Americans are calling for.
To make that a reality, it must expand with the support of our most significant national resource: the federal government. A robust, federally supported career and technical education system could help resolve nursing shortages, address crises in emergency services and build a new generation of skilled tradespeople. But education doesn’t just begin at age 18.
Public schools are the first rung on the ladder. Yet, under the latest federal budget proposal, funding for public K-12 schools is set to take a massive hit. One billion dollars for student mental health services? Gone. Programs aimed at closing achievement gaps and supporting students with disabilities? Slashed.
This isn’t belt-tightening. This is misaligned priority-setting.
Our schools are already overwhelmed. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves. School nurses, counselors and support staff are being cut or forced to cover multiple roles. In some districts, students show up to class hungry, traumatized and with nowhere to turn. And the federal government’s answer is to cut more?
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We can’t build a 21st Century workforce without 21st Century schools. We can’t have a strong manufacturing base without strong community colleges. We can’t train the next generation of emergency responders if we’re defunding the very programs that would prepare them. A factory job may require technical skill, but the journey to that skill begins in a kindergarten classroom.
When some lawmakers talk about "freedom," they often forget that freedom is meaningless without infrastructure. What good is the freedom to choose your doctor if there are no doctors in your town? What does school choice mean if your local public school is being bled dry by underinvestment and neglect?
America’s prosperity has always rested on a simple formula: invest in people, invest in places, and the profits will follow. The towns that are thriving today are those that never stopped believing in that equation. They fought to keep their schools open, their hospitals staffed, their libraries funded and their civic fabric intact.
If we truly want to restore American greatness, we must recognize that it isn’t built solely on tax breaks and tariffs. It’s built in the maternity wards, classrooms, firehouses and community colleges that serve as the foundation of working-class life.
Cutting for the sake of cutting isn’t policy. It’s performance art. And for working families like the one I grew up in, it’s not just shortsighted — it’s dangerous.
To restore the American Dream, we need more than rhetoric. We need reinvestment. In schools. In hospitals. In people. In hope. That’s the kind of manufacturing America still knows how to do — and it starts right in our backyard.