“This Country Belongs to All of Us!” Van Hollen Takes Aim at Billionaire Political Influence

Senator Chris Van Hollen. Denver, it's great to be with you. Last week, the American people went to the ballot box and they voted for change. They voted against a reckless and illegal war in Iran that's driving up gas prices, against rising costs that are crushing working families, and against the politics of cruelty and corruption. But my fellow Democrats, while they fired the Trump policies, they have not fully hired us. We've been given a chance. It's up to us to meet this moment. We know what we have to do because across this country, candidates from different backgrounds and different parts of our party, they ran on a strikingly similar platform. They didn't run on the tired Washington labels of progressive versus moderate. They ran on an economic populist message, on a commitment to fight for working people and take on a rigged economic and political system that has failed them for too long. And they ran on lowering costs, on ending the war, saving rural hospitals and fixing a broken health care system, getting money out of politics, raising the minimum wage so it's a livable wage. Holding AI companies accountable and making sure that not one dime of your money goes to build data centers. These are not Democratic or Republican issues. They resonate with Americans across the country. And now it's our job, all of our jobs, to show the American people that we've heard them and that we're going to act. And that work, it begins in the United States Senate. After the 2024 election, a poll got passed around Washington, D.C. Folks were asked what mattered more, preserving America's institutions or delivering change that improves people's lives. Nearly everyone chose change. And a lot of people in Washington, D.C. concluded that Americans had stopped caring about our democracy. But look at the choice that they were asked to make. Defend the system as it is, or get a better life. For a lot of Americans, our institutions sound like the thing that is standing in the way of that better life, the thing that let their wages fall and stall while rent soared, that bailed out the banks while families lost their homes, that justified war after war in the Middle East, that cozied up to special interests. Of course they chose change, but it wasn't a vote against government. It was a vote for a better government. Another poll came out recently. It asked Americans this question, whether Washington has the power to make a real difference in their lives. 92% said yes. Then they asked about whether it actually does make a positive difference in their lives. Only 43% said yes. That 49% gap, the trust deficit between those who say Washington has the power to make a difference in their lives and those who say it actually does, tells us that Americans have not given up on what their government can do. They know our government and our democracy can make their lives better, but they have wholly lost faith that it will. The lesson for me is not that Americans don't care about government or our democracy. It's that they want their government to work and change to be worthy of their trust. We should be preserving our institutions. We should not be preserving our institutions if they are not delivering for the American people. And we should be making, delivering for the American people, the single mission of our government, even when that means shaking things up. And that is why I'm running for the majority leader in the United States Senate. I think this is the key question before us as a country. It's bigger than the Democratic Party. It's about our country, this question of trust. We have an opportunity to restore faith in our democracy, not by preaching about its virtues, but by delivering for working people. That work starts in the United States Senate. What if we actually had votes on the Senate floor on things that the American people really cared about? No poison pills or tricks to hide things that are deeply unpopular or at the behest of corporate lobbyists. Show the American people. Show the American people where we stand, and if Trump wants to veto it, and once again show he stands with his billionaire buddies, let him do that. But we should not decide what we do based on what he might do. What if we went toe-to-toe with the president to take on the fights that are too important to lose, not just using the tools in our power, but by making the case to the American people to end the war? To protect healthcare, to stop our neighbors from being sent to foreign gulags, to defend our Constitution. What if we took the incredible energy we saw around the country last week and made that the North Star for the United States Senate? Our candidates ran on platforms that are popular to the American people. But what they ran on was not so popular with many powerful special interests who profit from the status quo and who deploy armies of lobbyists in Washington to defend that broken status quo. We must ensure that the interests of the American people that we heard and are reflected in the candidates who won are not drowned out by those special interests. That means putting our new members on the front lines of the United States Senate. Think about what it would mean in 2028 for that to be the Democratic Senate that we've had for two years. My friends, as I said yesterday, this is not about any one individual. It's about heeding the message of the American people. We must overcome the trust deficit. This country does not belong to the people who can afford to buy influence. It belongs to all of us, and it's time we governed like that. Thank you, fellow patriots. Let's get the job done.