Barack Obama urged people Wednesday to look past the "bustle and busyness" of their everyday lives this Fourth of July weekend to find a way to help make the American dream real not just for themselves, but for all.

To Obama, the problem is not that Americans are not willing to serve. It's that they have neither been asked aggressively enough nor given enough opportunities. In a clear slap to Bush, he decried that Americans eager to pitch in after the 2001 attacks were merely "asked to shop."

His solution is to promise repeated calls for American sacrifice as president and, to put teeth behind that, he has proposed a major expansion of government national service programs, first unveiled in Iowa in December, that would cost $3.5 billion a year. His campaign said he would fund this effort with savings from ending the war in Iraq and by canceling a new tax break for multinational corporations.