In the coming days, our nation will come together to celebrate 250 years since a group of farmers, lawyers, merchants, and ministers put their names on a document that changed the world. This Fourth of July, we are celebrating 250 years of the American Dream, and I am proud of what we have accomplished under President Trump this past year to protect that dream and unleash a new Golden Age of America. As we look forward to the next 250 years, we must all come together and renew our commitment to what makes the United States great.

The Declaration of Independence didn’t just announce a new nation. It announced a new idea: that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. It declared that ordinary men and women are capable of governing themselves. That was a radical idea in 1776, but 250 years later, it has produced the greatest nation the world has ever seen.

The Founders built a nation on principles designed to sustain through times both good and bad. George Washington warned about the corruption of power. Thomas Jefferson wrote those self-evident truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness not just for his generation, but for every generation that would follow. James Madison created a Constitution designed to protect our God given rights — and it has.

We held together through a Civil War that nearly tore us apart. We pulled ourselves out of a Depression that broke and reshaped nations. We stormed beaches in Normandy to stand up to tyranny and planted an American flag on the moon. We built the largest economy in world history, not with the heavy hand of government, but through the grit, ingenuity, and stubborn independence of the American people.

Freedom is a birthright, not a gift from government. Protecting it, expanding it, and passing it down intact has been and should forever be the crowning achievement of a generation. That work continues today. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, I am fighting every day to put more money back in the pockets of the families who earned it, to level the playing field for American farmers and manufacturers so they can continue to compete and win, and to ensure that Americans’ hard-earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare are protected now and for generations to come.

Time and time again, Southeast and South Central Missouri exhibits the ideals that our Founders imagined. Missouri farmers still work the land that has been passed down through generations; Missouri families are still some of the most patriotic, God-fearing people there are. They are the living proof that this experiment in self-governance still works. American patriotism is who we are.

The Founders who signed the Declaration in 1776 could not have imagined what the next 250 years would bring, and we should be just as bold about the next 250 — the greatest chapter is still ahead. God bless Missouri, and God bless the United States of America.