Source: United States House of Representatives – Rep Ro Khanna (CA-17)
BEYOND THE EPSTEIN CLASS:
A NEW ECONOMIC PATRIOTISM
Rep. Ro Khanna’s Speech at the National Press Club April 14, 2026
We meet at a time of crisis in self-government.
Cynicism, and even nihilism, has taken hold in many corners of our nation. People are losing faith that liberal democracy has the strength to deliver.
The American Dream is out of reach for many of our fellow citizens.
Powerful economic forces of globalization and automation seem beyond their control, shaping their destinies while their struggles go unnoticed.
More troubling, there is growing doubt that we can still come together around a shared national purpose.
Americans do not trust government because they see a system that is corrupted by big money and captured by the powerful.
And nothing encapsulates that sense of injustice more than what I call the Epstein class.
This is a group of elites who seem to operate outside the law.
When people see powerful men abusing and trafficking young girls without consequence—it shakes something fundamental.
They have seen the callowness, immaturity, hedonism, rootlessness, and immorality of our governing class.
People are asking themselves: If they can get away with that, what can’t they get away with?
They see elite indifference and impunity has led to wealth piling up —into a few hands, in a few places— while vast parts of this country experience stagnation and despair.
Workers and communities are treated as dispensable, as they see fortunes being built on offshoring jobs, automating plants, liquidating companies, buying back stock, and harvesting data.
Factory towns hollowed out. Main streets emptied. Entire regions left behind.
At the same time, 19 billionaires hold over $3 trillion in wealth ––12.5% of our entire economy. This is a concentration greater than the era of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie. The inequality is staggering.
We are in a new Gilded Age.
Millions of Americans face tomorrow with anxiety — anxiety at the gas pump and the grocery store, anxiety if they or their family gets sick, anxiety if their job will be replaced by AI.
The question is no longer are you better off than you were four years ago? It’s are you better off than you were four weeks ago?
Decades ago, scholars like William Julius Wilson warned about Black job loss hollowing out inner cities. Too few listened. Later, economists like Anne Case and Angus Deaton showed how economic despair was spreading in white working class communities. We still did not act.
Now, concern has hit the professional class. I was just at Brown University and 80 percent of the kids raised their hands when I asked if they were worried about getting a job. Even the Ivy Leaguers and their parents are concerned.
A society fearing its future is a society that is in decline.
We don’t need to be a nation in fear.
Where do we go from here?
We cannot go back to the days before Trump.
The time for incrementalism and nudges of a broken system is over.
That is why I am proposing the most bold, ambitious, programmatic agenda of a generation.
I call it a New Economic Patriotism.
This is a comprehensive new economic vision. A new deal for this era. A freedom budget for this century.
Not extractive capitalism—but patriotic, productive free enterprise that leaves no community behind.
When Europe was devastated after World War II, George C. Marshall developed a plan for reindustrialization.
We need a 21st century Marshall Plan for middle class and working class Americans — mobilizing business, workers, universities, and government to rebuild struggling communities and close our economic divide.
Here’s what that means.
First, it means Jobs.
We launch a Work for America program—modeled on the Works Progress Administration that created over 8.5 million jobs.
Every young person, out of high school or college, will have the chance to do work that is deeply meaningful: rebuilding communities, providing care services, working on national technological projects, making government agencies user friendly, training in industries of the future.
Young people can work in their own communities or a community far from where they grew up — building bonds of social cohesion across divides.
After a few years of service, they build real-world skills that translate directly into strong private sector careers. It becomes a civic equivalent of military service, highly valued by employers and a proven pathway into opportunity.
Second, it means Investment.
We will create a historic National Industrial Bank to invest in the industries that will define the future:
semiconductors, rare earth minerals, advanced manufacturing, key starting materials for drugs, medical innovation, modern steel, robotics, ship building, and more.
This isn’t invoking distant history. We did it recently with the CHIPS Act that I helped write a few years ago. Now we must do it for other critical technologies setting up new factories in communities that suffered de-industrialization like Lorain and Johnstown.
Third, we are going to make Care a national priority.
Childcare, eldercare, and home care are not just services.They are the backbone of a humane society, and they are a massive source of good-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced or automated.
Fourth, making sure Americans have Modern Skills for the economy of the future.
We will form a nationwide system of trade schools and tech institutes.
That means 1000 new trade schools for jobs such as HVAC technicians, electricians, cosmetologists, drone operators, and robotic technicians. These young tradespeople will learn how to use technology and AI.
As for the tech institutes, they will be set up at public colleges, HBCU’s, and HSIs.
We did this with the Techwise Program I helped launch with Google, Nvidia and Zoom.
We provided 9 month courses, a 5k scholarship, 10 hours a week leading to 75k-100k cutting edge AI and tech jobs for young folks who could do them, while staying in their community. This program must be scaled for the entire nation.
Fifth, we must give workers ownership.
AI creates a capital biased world, with exaggerated returns to shareholders. Paying workers a living wage is necessary, but not enough. They must share in a company’s profits, through stock or defined benefits.
If workers are more productive than ever, they must be compensated to match that and have shorter work weeks and time off.
Good jobs and worker ownership is the starting point. In the richest nation in history, no American should be worrying about the basic necessities of life.
That is why we need an Economic Bill of Rights for our time.
The moment has finally come for a national health insurance system, so your healthcare is not tied to your job. Medicare for All is a better system that lowers our costs, with better outcomes, where every doctor is in network.
For our young people — to assure career opportunity is not limited by your families wealth, we need free college and free trade schools.
For our families — a national $10 a day childcare program would lessen the financial burdens on working Moms and Dads trying to survive.
And we address the housing crisis by building actual affordable housing, capping rent, and assisting first time buyers with their downpayment.
How do we pay for all this? We pay for it by making different choices. We stop endless foreign wars and invest here at home. We cut wasteful defense spending that no longer serves our security.
Consider that we could have free public college and trade school for every American with just the money that we have spent so far on the war in Iran.
Every bomb we drop overseas is a student who does not get a scholarship, a rural hospital that is not staying open, childcare that parents are not able to get.
By the way, I am not calling for “Bloated Government”. I am calling for “Dynamic Government”. Working with the private sector, protecting workers, driving innovation — generating results, not waste.
Remember it was American taxpayer funded technology breakthroughs that helped create the current markets in my district that have generated so much wealth.
And we say to those who have done well: If America has been good to you, then you must do good for America. That is why we need a billionaire tax.
It is patriotic to pay our fair share. This is not anti-business. This is pro-America.
I am passionate about this new economic vision because I have seen what this country can be.
I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. My neighbors were electricians, nurses, teachers, HVAC technicians, doctors. The kids of the neighborhood all played street hockey together, traded baseball cards, went sledding or shoveled driveways.
My parents came here believing in America. We were a nation brimming with confidence. Kennedy had called for us to go to the Moon. This country was on the move, bursting with energy, preeminent in science and industry.
I went to public school. I had coaches who believed in me even though I couldn’t hit. I had teachers who told me that I could achieve anything I wanted in America.
I believed them.
I want young people to have the chances that I did, with an America that gives every family the chances it gave mine.
If we bring economic hope and prosperity to every neighborhood of this country — for those left out, for those who have given up, for those barely hanging on — we can rebuild faith in our democratic project.
Right now, we have too many elected officials who are completely unprepared for what’s coming.
The people of the United States need leadership and a government that understands what the future is.
Economic renewal is our new national purpose.
We can then build a cohesive, multiracial democracy—where every American has dignity, independence, and security.
America wants to be proud again. America wants to be a force for good again, for ourselves and for the world.
With bold leadership and a New Economic Patriotism, we will take back our nation from the Epstein class.