Last week, my friend Senator John Fetterman and I stood on a court at the 6th Man Center â a Philadelphia Youth Basketball facility in North Philly â watching dozens of children crowd around their phones grinning. They werent watching a video or playing a game. They were looking for investment accounts in their own names â accounts that give them a real stake in Americas future and become available on July 4.
Parents can celebrate Independence Day knowing that their children are eligible for a Trump Account: a $1,000 Treasury seed for every child born between 2025 and 2028, and another $250 for children ten and under in lower-income communities, funded not by Washington but by philanthropy.
These accounts were created a year ago as part of President Trumps Working Families Tax Cuts Act, for which I cast the deciding vote in the Senate. Alongside no tax on tips or overtime and new tax credits for school choice and childcare, these measures are a down payment on the American Dream. They are also proof that we can share American prosperity without sacrificing the free markets and individual liberty on which this country was founded.
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 â and the prosperity it makes possible â more Americans must have a real stake in its success.
Today, too many Americans are helping build this countrys future without sharing meaningfully in its upside. Since the global financial crisis, the top one percents share of the nations 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 â its both indefensible and politically unsustainable.
For decades, Washingtons 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 â signed into law last July 4 â 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 â 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.
Michael and Susan Dell have shown what private investment in the next generation can look like. Their $6.25 billion pledge â enough to seed accounts for 25 m
