Tyler Czarkowski is a senior at Hopkinton High School. He is captain of the Hopkinton baseball team and lives in Hopkinton.

In November, I will be voting for the first time in the general election for the president of the United States. It pains me that the United States is not run better. It is run by whatever the most recent trends are in our country.

I work at a supermarket, and I see people every day struggling to buy their groceries and our representatives in Washington, D.C. do nothing to help those people. As someone who is just starting in the world, it is an uphill task to think about how I’m going to be able to afford college, housing, food and gas. The cost of living in the United States is outrageous. According to the NH Business Review, the median sale price for a single-family home in New Hampshire is $465,000. My father bought his first home at the age of 24. Homeownership is now out of reach for my generation.

Starting in November we need elected officials that are going to come in and run America more efficiently. They need to cut out all the things that we don’t need and protect the people that are within our borders legally. Our country is not appealing for businesses now as owners are looking to outsource tons of jobs. According to CNBC 2023 was the second biggest year for job cuts in the technology sector on record.

America is the land of opportunity, and we need to get back to that because the next generation like myself will not be able to save our great nation if there are no well-paying jobs in the United States. As of right now, we have 34 trillion dollars in national debt, and we have done nothing to eliminate that number. Both presidential candidates have said they were going to do things about the debt and they haven’t. So we the people must make the case for Washington, D.C. to do what’s best for the country.

We must restore our programs to what they were like Social Security. I do not want to wait until I’m 70 to retire, but this is not about me because I am sitting here watching my mother. I worry she’s going to have to work another 25 years for a modest retirement. America needs to rise above like it always has and make an economic comeback that is going to save our country from the direction it is heading.

We are a powerhouse and there is no reason why we cannot dominate business as we have in the past. We must plan to start paying off our national debt and start paying people what they deserve to make. I also completely understand that we must spend money on the necessities for our country to function but there are programs that the United States does not need to keep going.

It is mind-boggling that we elect people to the House of Representatives every two years and every six years for the Senate and they sit there and play Republican-Democrat games while the people of America are suffering. This is my message to Washington, D.C. to bring back the art of compromise for the American people. Also to provide economic opportunities to bring our country back and put money in the wallets of average Americans.