I’ve always said the most rewarding thing about being elected to represent the people of Southeast and South Central Missouri is being able to fight for people whose needs are being ignored by Washington bureaucrats. Often, tat means fighting back against DC overreach or crazy regulations being proposed that harm working Americans. But sometimes, fighting for the people of Missouri means giving a voice to the voiceless, and that’s why I was proud to join First Lady Melania Trump this week at a roundtable I hosted to help foster youth — a group of individuals who is too often forgotten.

Mrs. Trump has started a “Fostering the Future” initiative, which is aimed at providing educational opportunities and technology -based scholarships for foster youth. One individual helped by this program whose story I recently learned about was Seth from Rolla, who entered foster care around age 15 and aged out at 18. He experienced homelessness, worked three jobs, and walked 6 miles each day to go between them. Luckily, Seth received the Melania Trump Foster Youth to Independence housing voucher, which in his words, “flipped the script” on what he thought was possible in life. Thanks to the First Lady, Seth currently works as a corrections officer and intends to apply to college this fall.

Seth’s story is heartwarming, but unfortunately, it’s an outlier in the foster care system. There is a federal program, the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program, designed to help foster youth successfully transition to adulthood and independence, but it is in desperate need of modernization. During the roundtable, we explored ways to enhance how states use federal funds, strengthen coordination between child welfare and housing programs, and expand access to education and workforce training opportunities. We heard directly from two foster youth who had successfully reached college about the barriers they faced in achieving their dream

As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over the nation’s foster care program, I am committed to turning the First Lady’s inspiring vision into a brighter future for the next generation of foster youth. In my committee, we have introduced a package of six bipartisan bills that are in line with the goals of the First Lady’s initiative. These bills, which include reforms designed to make educational vouchers more accessible to foster youth who don’t attend college to providing additional assistance to foster youth who become homeless, address real-world problems experienced by too many youth who enter the foster system — often through no fault of their own.

I am committed to continuing this bipartisan work alongside Mrs. Trump — focusing on reforms that improve housing, education, job training, and legal support for foster youth. By strengthening programs like Chafee and supporting the Trump Administration’s Fostering the Future initiative, we aren’t just helping individual young people — we’re building a stronger America.