Congressman Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06) marked a personal milestone on September 18, 2025, commemorating 19 years since he became a U.S. citizen and reflecting on his remarkable journey from a congressional intern to a member of the United States Congress.
In a heartfelt post on X, Ciscomani shared a touching moment of his parents visiting him on Capitol Hill, 18 years apart, highlighting the opportunities afforded by the American Dream.
“Same place and same people, 18 years apart,” Ciscomani wrote. “In 2006, my parents visited me on Capitol Hill. I was a Congressional intern with a Green Card. Now they’re back visiting me again. And I’m a member of Congress with a Green Pin. Grateful for the opportunities our great nation offers!”
Ciscomani, who represents the Arizona 6th Congressional District, also celebrated the 19th anniversary of his U.S citizenship, recalling the moment he raised his right hand and became a citizen.
“From the son of a bus driver to serving in the United States Congress—my story and millions of other stories are only possible in the greatest country on earth. Grateful for the blessings of citizenship and the American Dream!” said Ciscomani on X.
Before his election to Congress in 2022, Ciscomani served as the senior advisor to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and held leadership roles in the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, where he advocated for economic growth and community development.
As a member of Congress, Ciscomani has focused on issues critical to his constituents, including border security, economic development, and veterans affairs. He serves on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and House Committee on Appropriations, where he advocates for policies to strengthen Arizona’s communities and support the nation’s veterans.
Thank you, Mr. President! Proud to be a citizen of the greatest country on earth.
In her latest op-ed, Arizona State Senator Shawnna Bolick expresses a growing alarm regarding the prospect of home ownership for younger adults also highlighted in a RealClear Investigations (RCI) report. In short: both the Arizona Senator and the journalists at RCI have come to the same conclusion: the American dream of home ownership is dying at the hands of our federal, state, and local governments, and lobbyists.
As Bolick noted, property costs in Arizona have steadily increased over the past five years, with the average cost of a home ramping up to nearly $500,000 in the greater Phoenix area. Citing ZipRecruiter statistics, she noted that the average salary in the state is $68,329 annually.
Bolick summarized the problem succinctly saying, “For too many today, such a purchase at a relatively young age is increasingly out of reach. Across most major American cities, home prices are by far outpacing wages. If states experiencing economic growth want to keep up with demand, they will need to do something about affordable housing.”
In the RCI report, Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox suggested one big problem is the disconnect between urban planners and consumers: ‘‘These choices underscore an analysis of Canadian poll results by Sotheby’s, which suggests a ‘disconnect’ between urban planning and consumer preferences: ‘The picture is of young urban families overwhelmingly preferring detached houses, and decidedly not the condominiums into which planners are driving them.’ As Sotheby’s puts it, ‘The report dispels myths about young, urban families’ housing preferences.'”
Kotkin and Cox also wrote in the investigation that increasingly, the acquisition of a home in America has become reliant on what they term “the classic feudal formula – being born into ‘the funnel of privilege.’” They explained that millennial Americans are “three times as likely as boomers to count on inheritance for their retirement.” And indeed a recent report from the Institute for Family Studies revealed that since 1970, the percentage of young adults who own their own homes has plunged from 50% to as little as 25-30%.
The problem hasn’t escaped the notice of Arizona legislators however, as Bolick noted with her sponsored Senate Bill 1229. She described it as a measure to “address our state’s housing shortage,” which would “deregulate local zoning jurisdictions to reduce unnecessary red tape and overburdensome decision-making coming from our central municipal planning departments.” In addition, she wrote “the bill would allow municipalities to set minimum lot sizes to allow for these types of homes in new developments of five acres or more on lots zoned as single-family homes.”
In boasting about Bidenomics two weeks ago in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden declared that his policies are “restoring the American dream.” Then he went into his creepy whispering mode and assured us “it’s working.”
Huh?
Isn’t a big aspiration of the American dream owning a home? Biden keeps making first-time homeownership harder for young families for two reasons. One is that the overall jump in inflation and the slower increase in wages and salaries means that homes are more expensive. High home prices benefit those who already own their homes, but much of the increased value is due to general inflation, which reached a high of 9% last year and hurts everyone.
A bigger killer for first-time homebuyers has been the steady rise in mortgage rates under Biden. When he came into office, the mortgage rate was 2.9% nationally. Now it is 7.1%, thanks in no small part to the Federal Reserve’s 11 interest rate increases prompted by the $6 trillion Biden spending and borrowing spree in 2021 and 2022.
So now, according to the mortgage company Redfin, just the increase in interest rates on a 30-year mortgage from 5% to 7% means that a middle-income family that could once afford a median-value home of $500,000 can only afford a home worth $429,000. Great, spend more and you get less house. Or instead of a single-family home, you can only afford a three-room condo or a townhouse. If we compare the rates today versus when Donald Trump was president, the typical homebuyer can only afford a house with a price tag more than $100,000 less than three years ago.
What a deal? Maybe this is one reason the size of a new home is smaller than in the past.
Here’s another way to think about the damage done by Biden policies: If you want to buy a $500,000 home today, which is close to the median price in many desirable locations, your total interest payments will be at least $800 more per month. That means over three decades of payments totaling at least $250,000.
Of course, rents are up nearly 20% as well, so for many 20-somethings, this means sleeping in the parents’ basement.
Biden talks a lot about bridging gaps between rich and poor and blacks and whites. But the group that is most handicapped by these interest rate shocks is minorities. Black homeownership is still less than 50% for black households. The Washington Post calls this “heartbreaking,” but they blame racism, not bad government policies.
There’s one other impediment to homeownership for Generation X and millennials. Many 30- and 40-somethings are hamstrung by their existing and expanding debt. Credit card debt is now $1.03 trillion. Half of all families are expected to have problems paying off this debt each month. Delinquencies are rising, which can mean penalty rates of 20% to 25%.
So, if families can’t afford their existing debt, how will they get a bank to approve a $400,000 or more mortgage loan?
An even bigger question is how in the world can Biden call his economic policies a success?
Perhaps Biden has a secret plan to “forgive” trillions of dollars of mortgage debt, as he has already attempted to do with student loans. But that just shifts the debt burden to taxpayers — hardly a solution.
The Biden administration’s assault on homeownership isn’t just harmful to the families that are being priced out of the market. It’s bad for communities and cities around the country. When families become homeowners and set roots in a town, they are much more prone to care about not just improving their own house and maintaining the upkeep and mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges, but it gives them a stake in the schools and children in the neighborhood and the quality of the public services. In other words, homeownership gives Americans a sense of Tocquevillian civic pride.
Crime is lower, neighbors are friendlier and everyone’s property values rise when they live in a community of owners, not renters.
There is one reason to feel today’s downward spiral can be reversed. Back in 1980 when Jimmy Carter was president, mortgage rates weren’t 7%; they reached above 17%. Voters rebelled against the economic mayhem and chased Carter out of office. Ronald Reagan came into the White House, and with wiser economic fiscal policies, mortgage rates quickly fell in half and then lower still. It can happen again.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and chief economist at FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of the “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy.”
