When I was a boy growing up in Chesapeake, I often worked odd jobs during the summer, even if it was mowing a neighbor’s lawn, white washing fences, or earning coins by collecting and recycling old Coke bottles tossed along the roadside. My parents encouraged it. They said they wanted me to learn how to be a good citizen (although I suspect they also wanted me to do something other than play baseball and sit out on the front porch playing Parcheesi with friends). My summer jobs eventually taught me to value hard work and rest.
This weekend signals the final days of summer. The whole nation seems to take a pause –a deep breath before an exhale into a new season of work, the return of school schedules, and shorter days. During this time, I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of work.
As I traveled across the Fourth District this month, I shook hands with many business owners and I listened to dedicated employees. I spoke with hardworking parents raising their children. I talked with leaders of congregations and classrooms. They were eager to tell me about their jobs. But almost without fail, they didn’t talk about what they did on a day-to-day basis. They spoke about their families and the people they support.
We work to earn money, but work is so much more than a paycheck. To work is to give a part of yourself to a mission. If you work on an assembly line, it’s towards the mission of building a product. If you run a business, it’s towards the mission of your industry or your customers. Even if you don’t particularly like your job, earning the paycheck gives you the satisfaction of supporting something bigger. A family. A home. A cause you support. A dream for something different.
Work is a silver thread throughout the American character. Throughout history, it has been individual Americans who have helped our nation burst through economic sluggishness. Contrary to what many leaders in Washington believe today, it is not the government that powers America. It is the individual. One job feeds a family. One job helps build the next school. One invention brings the next medical breakthrough. One new employee adds to the growth of the company. It’s the power of one, but it’s the collective power of the American workforce that drives America to greatness.
I am an optimist. I believe in the greatness of America and I believe our greatest days are ahead of us. But I am impatient optimist. I am restless to leave our kids and grandkids an America as great as the one in which I was blessed to grow up. I’m eager to return to a government that empowers Americans, not Uncle Sam’s purse strings, and therefore stretches the reach of our economy.
Some common sense reforms can return us to a work ethic that empowers the individual, thrives on American responsibility, and shrinks the size of the federal government: a zero-tolerance policy for government waste and excessive spending, scrapping the current tax code and starting over, balancing the budget, preventing Americans from being taxed twice, and making it easier for businesses to invest and grow.
These are just a few policies we can enact today; they are things I’m fighting for everyday. If you have ideas, I want to hear them too. I encourage you to join the conversation on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/randyforbes. Our collective efforts will help put the power back with the individual.
Let us remember what Ronald Reagan once shared on the observance of Labor Day: “I would match the American worker against any in the world. The people whose labor fuels our industry and economy are among the most productive anywhere…Let us tap into that well of human spirit…Our destiny is not our fate; it is our choice.”
Randy Forbes represents the Fourth District of Virginia in Congress.
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