It's Been Two Years

When I first started thinking about running for the United States Senate, I talked with people in living rooms and backyards all across Massachusetts.

I wanted to hear what people thought about me running, and more importantly, about their concerns, frustrations, and hopes for the future.

And I wanted to have a conversation about what I saw as two fundamentally different visions for America. Are we a country that says, "I've got mine, the rest of you are on your own"? Or are we a better people than that?

At one of my first stops at a home in Andover, Massachusetts, someone asked me a question about building a future. I responded by saying "nobody got rich on his own." Somebody else recorded my answer and stuck it up on YouTube a few weeks later. Today, that little video has been seen more than a million times! I'm still amazed by that.

This month is the two-year anniversary of when I started traveling around the Commonwealth, and in so many ways, it has been a long two years for our country. And it's been a long two years for me too of campaigning and serving in the Senate.

But I still feel passionately about what I said back then, and I feel even more passionately about it as I see what's happening in Washington. Watch the video again, share it on Facebook, and remind people what we're still fighting for:

Two years later, I still believe down to my toes that we are a people that do better when we invest in our future, when we invest in education and infrastructure so that everyone can get ahead.

I've been working hard the past eight months in Washington, but I don't need to tell you that there's still so much work to do.

Big oil companies -- some of the most profitable companies on the planet -- are still guzzling down billions of dollars in subsidies, while Head Start and Meals on Wheels funding are cut in sequestration. Millionaires and billionaires still don't pay their fair share in taxes, but student loans continue to increase and the policy of the federal government is now to profit off our young people getting a higher education.

In other words, the game is still rigged to make the rich and powerful even more rich and powerful. And that means we've got more work to do to help make sure the next kid can get ahead and the kid after that and the kid after that.

As I have traveled back and forth across Massachusetts over the past two years, many people have told me about the challenges they face and their hopes for the future. And every day that I go to the United States Senate I carry those hopes, along with a determination to give families a fighting chance.

It's been two years, but one other thing is still true: I can't do it alone. We're in this together.