My fellow Pennsylvanians,\ We are here today because too many hardworking people are doing everything right—and still falling behind.\ You work full-time. You pick up extra shifts. You run a small business, drive deliveries after work, care for your family, and stretch every dollar. Yet every trip to the grocery store costs more. Every utility bill feels heavier. Every rent payment, mortgage payment, and tank of gas takes more from the paycheck you worked so hard to earn.\ That is not just a statistic. That is real life.\ In the Philadelphia region, consumer prices rose 5.4 percent over the year ending in June, while food rose 4.2 percent and energy rose 16.7 percent. Gasoline alone was up 30.1 percent year over year. For working families, inflation is not an economic talking point—it is the pressure they feel before payday.\[bls\]\ Pennsylvania deserves leadership that understands that.\ We need leaders who fight for lower everyday costs, not empty promises. We need affordable housing, reliable energy, fair competition at the grocery store and gas pump, and wages that allow people to live—not merely survive.\ We need to support the small businesses that power our main streets. We need to protect workers whose paychecks lose value when prices rise faster than wages. And we need to make it possible for young people to build a future here: to save, buy a home, start a business, raise a family, and stay in the communities they love.\ This is not about left versus right. It is about right versus wrong.\ It is wrong that a parent can work forty hours a week and still worry about feeding their children. It is wrong that seniors must choose between medicine and heat. It is wrong that young Pennsylvanians with ambition and talent feel like the American dream is moving farther away.\ But we are not powerless.\ When we organize, when we vote, when we hold every elected official accountable, we can demand an economy that works for the people who make Pennsylvania run. The factory worker. The nurse. The teacher. The truck driver. The barber. The restaurant owner. The warehouse worker. The entrepreneur with a dream and a laptop at the kitchen table.\ Pennsylvania has always been built by people who refuse to quit.\ So let us stand together and say: enough is enough. We deserve affordable lives. We deserve opportunity. We deserve an economy where hard work leads somewhere.\ Let’s fight for lower costs, stronger wages, thriving local businesses, and a Pennsylvania where every family has a fair shot.\ Thank you—and let’s get to work.