In Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union Address, he proposed a Second Bill of Rights. It was a visionary proposal for economic and social justice. It aimed to guarantee every American a baseline of economic security and dignity. History tells us that Roosevelt was not just any President. According to the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Survey, he is the 2^nd greatest President in our history, only behind Abraham Lincoln and one spot ahead of George Washington. If you look at the Presidents that are honored in the National Mall, you will see that only 4 have this honor. There is George Washington with the Washington Monument, honoring our first President, who set our democratic precedents by avoiding a monarchy. He was our first NO KINGS protestor. There is Thomas Jefferson, with the Jefferson Memorial; he was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase that led to our Manifest Destiny. Abraham Lincoln, with the Lincoln Memorial, honors the man who preserved the Union and ended slavery. The fourth is the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial, honoring the man who led us through the great depression with his New Deal reforms and gave the country sound leadership throughout World War II.

The motivation for Roosevelt's 2^nd Bill of Rights was that he thought the original Bill of Rights focused on political freedoms but failed to ensure economic security, which he saw as essential to true liberty. This is a man who, during the Depression, worked hard to bring a country that was suffering a sense of dignity with his New Deal Programs. This is also a man who saw the horrors of the Nazi Fascist government, which wanted to suppress the world. Both events were the biggest crises of the century, and he took them head-on. He realized that the country was not working for the masses and recognized that changes were needed. What Roosevelt wanted in the 2^nd Bill of Rights that were; 1: The Right to a Job, 2: The Right to a living wage, 3: The Right to a decent home, 4: The Right to medical care, 5: The Right to an education, 6: The Right to economic security, 7: The Right to fair competition 8: The Right to a fair return for farmers. These were eight basic rights that would ensure the economic stability of the nation.

The Right to a Job should be a basic right. That sounds pretty basic, but the Right to a Job has to go hand in hand with the Right to a living wage. In 2000, a middle-income family could expect to spend about $165,630 to raise a child through the age of 17. By 2024, the annual cost of raising a child has risen yearly by around $23,000, resulting in an estimated cost of around $414,000 through age 18. This represents quite an increase driven by inflation and rising costs in key categories as housing, food, childcare, and education. For instance, Childcare and education expenses have seen a dramatic rise, increasing from 2% of the total child-rearing cost in earlier decades to 16% by 2015. Very few of our wages have kept up with the increases. As the cost of child-rearing increases yearly, so does the number of children living in poverty.

Many politicians have run on a platform to be able to buy a home. Over the past two decades, housing costs in the United States have risen significantly faster than the median household income, which has led to a worsening affordability crisis. Since 2000, median home prices have increased by nearly 160 percent, while inflation-adjusted median household income has seen only minimal growth. This trend has resulted in median house prices not being approximately six times the median income, up from ranges of four to five times in two decades.  Too many people can no longer afford to buy a home. Back in the 70s, I was told that the price of the home you buy is equivalent to 2 years' worth of income. Now the average price of a home in Fort Myers, Florida, where I live, is $360,000. That would mean that to buy an average-priced home using the formula that I used, you would need an income of $180,000 a year. The average salary of a teacher in Fort Myers is just over $50,000. Even if both the husband and the wife were teachers, they could not afford a Median home. The average hourly wage in Fort Myers is just over $22 an hour. Owning a home is out of reach for way too many.

The right to healthcare should be a no-brainer, but that is one of the most fought-over things in this country. As much of the world now has universal healthcare, we are still calling it a Marxist concept. Roosevelt knew that it was a right that all freemen have access to quality healthcare. We are a country that talks a lot about freedom and liberty, and then rejects the one thing that would really enhance the freedom of everyone in the nation. Just think of how free a person would be if we had a healthcare system that followed them wherever they went. That would be real freedom instead of a system that enslaves us to an employer because we need healthcare benefits, or is so expensive that we go without.   As long as we have a system that makes huge profits off of people's suffering and as long as we have a system that enslaves us to our employers, real freedom will never be a thing in this country.

The right to an education is under attack as never before in our country. Today, we call educated people who search for the truth “woke”. Today, we have educational and government systems that ban real history and real truth that should be part of our educational system. We even have a President who is forcing the Smithsonian Museum to show a less-than-truthful part of history. We have a President who wants to dictate what our universities teach. As we study history and really define the actual events that happened and why they happened, what we teach about those events should change. That should not be called woke. That should be called our continued search for the truth.

I can go on about the other rights that Roosevelt thought that every person should have, but I am pretty sure that you get the picture. Today, we call what Roosevelt thought of as the right of all people as Socialism or radical leftist ideas. You talk about healthcare, and some people will even call it Communism or Marxism. Me? I call it Freedom and Liberty. I once had a friend tell me that Billionaires own us. There lies the problem. We will never be free if billionaires think that they own us and are above us. Billionaires have gotten there off the backs of underpaid employees. Yes, Roosevelt was right, we need to have a 2^nd Bill of Rights, rights that give us real economic and social freedom.