A Fighting Chance

Some say the rich and powerful now control Washington and always will. I say this battle isn’t over yet. True, the playing field isn’t level and the system is rigged. But we’re putting up a heck of a fight, and we intend to keep on fighting.

This victory wasn’t mine. That’s not some kind of fake modesty talk—no, that statement is deep-down truth. This victory belonged to all the families who have been chipped away at, squeezed, and hammered. This time, they fought together and won. And now they were sending me to Washington to fight for them and for every hardworking family who just wants a fighting chance to live the American dream.





Epilogue | Fighting Again … and Again

IT WAS MAY 8, 2013, and I was working on a speech in my office in Washington.

I sat at my desk and took a last look at my notes. My temporary office surprised visitors a bit: it was in a trailer. To get there, you walked along elaborate, marble-clad hallways, took a sharp turn onto a plywood ramp, and then suddenly encountered an office featuring prefab walls, cast-off furniture, and a fake window that concealed a tangle of electrical wires and cables. But hey, fancy office or not, I was now a senator, and I could take my shot at introducing a bill on the floor of the Senate—which was what I was about to do, for the very first time.

When it came time to head over to the Capitol, I decided against taking the underground train that usually ferries people back and forth. I wanted some space to think, so I decided to walk through the tunnel on the sidewalk that runs alongside the train. Besides, I move pretty fast—sometimes I beat the train.

As I walked through the big, hollow space, the sound of my heels echoing off the walls, I remembered an encounter the previous summer, back when we were in the thick of a hotly contested campaign. The local teamsters had offered us their hall in Worcester for a Sunday afternoon rally. I gave a short speech and took a lot of questions. Afterward, a long line formed. People gave some advice or offered encouragement. There were pictures and babies and a fair amount of laughter.

Near the end of the line was a young man: early twenties, medium height, sandy-brown short hair. When I reached him, he stepped forward and, with no preliminaries, blurted out that he had done everything he was supposed to do. Counting on his fingers, he punched out the list. Worked hard in high school. Went to a good university. Got good grades. Graduated on time. Everything—check, check, check.

And then … nothing. No job. No new apartment. No bright future. He’d been looking for work for more than a year, and still nothing.

Actually, it was worse than nothing. Every day he fell a little further behind. His student loan debt got a little bigger. His stretch of unemployment got a little longer. His fear that he would never build a secure, independent life cut a little deeper.

Now he had moved back in with his parents—and he had no idea when he would move out or how he would get his own life under way.

I met him in Worcester. But I heard the same story in Falmouth and Dorchester. In Marlborough, Marshfield, and Methuen. In Weymouth and Westport and Ware.

I heard the story over and over and over, until I wanted to shout to the rooftops on behalf of these young men and women. They were trying so hard, but they felt like their futures had broken apart before they had even begun.

And now here I was, about to give a speech on the floor of the US Senate.

I stepped into the Senate chamber and walked straight to my desk—the same desk that for so many years had belonged to Ted Kennedy, and to John Kennedy before him. I clipped on my microphone and took a deep breath. And then I jumped in.

America’s young people are struggling with more than $1 trillion in student loan debt. I asked: Why does the United States government lend to the biggest banks—the same banks that nearly broke our economy—at an interest rate that is less than one percent, and then turn around and charge our students an interest rate that is nine times higher? Why is the US government scheduled to make $185 billion in profits off the backs of our students? We’re not investing in these students—no, we’re asking them to pony up the money to subsidize the rest of us.

Then I introduced my bill, the Bank on Students Act, which would require that the Federal Reserve lend money to our kids at the same rate they lend to the big banks. I finished with:

Unlike the big banks, students don’t have armies of lobbyists and lawyers. They have only their voices. And they call on us to do what is right.



Months have passed since that day in May; I’ve been a senator for a little more than a year. I’ve seen our Congress up close, and parts of it are truly dysfunctional. I’ve already lived through one government shutdown and too many Republican filibusters to count. Every day I wrestle with the same ruthless reality that I’ve known for many years: Change—real change—is hard. Uphill, grind-grind-grind, sweat-it-out hard.