In Congress, 60 years old is considered young. I’m 35, which makes me a relative preteen compared to my colleagues, especially for this incoming Congress — the third oldest in history. This isn’t anything new. Congress has been “old” for a long time, with the median age of the House rising steadily since the 1980s. As one of the few younger voices in Congress, I know where the Democratic Party is missing the mark with young people and what we need to do to fix it.
Younger generations like mine don’t really trust institutions or those in power — and for good reason. I was in seventh grade on September 11, 2001, and then watched as the US spent billions of dollars and deployed millions of service members to fight the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the Great Recession years later, I was getting ready to graduate from college, and many of my friends couldn’t find a job or afford somewhere to live. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, so many young people missed out on big and little things, such as learning in a traditional classroom, attending school dances, graduation, getting first jobs. We don’t trust that our leaders know how to get us out of the messes they got us into. And all the while we’re told that our opinions don’t matter as young people, to wait our turn; that we’re lazy, entitled, and ungrateful.
This is a hard truth for some, but Democrats aren’t entitled to young people’s votes. Even with all the great things the recent Democratic trifecta accomplished — capping seniors’ prescription drug costs at $2,000 per year; authorizing a $1.2 trillion investment in repairing and modernizing our infrastructure; passing the biggest US investment in climate action ever, and the first gun safety law in 30 years — we still didn’t improve the ability of young people to make ends meet.
For previous generations, one of the best indicators of a strong economy was low unemployment. If you had a job, you and your family could generally get by. What we’re seeing today, though, is that even while unemployment is down (which is good!), people with a job can’t afford the basics. It makes sense that Gen Z and millennials, like most Americans, named the cost of living and inflation as their top voting concerns ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
An even more recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that young Americans care about inflation even more than older adults. And yet, even with Democratic control of Congress and the White House, we failed to address the two biggest costs for young people, costs that are still outpacing inflation and making it harder for young people to make ends meet: housing and childcare.
Our housing market is broken. It’s just too expensive for renters and homebuyers alike to afford a place to live. For young, first-time homebuyers today, finding an affordable starter home amid high housing costs, the sheer lack of available housing options, and the enormous student debt our generation holds is like winning the Hunger Games. Not to mention, the average millennial lost about 13% of their total earnings between 2005 and 2017 because we entered the workforce during the Great Recession or its recovery, which forced us to settle for lower wages and delay many of life’s milestones — like buying a house.
Across the country, Americans need about $127,000 for a down payment on a typical house, according to Zillow. In my hometown of San Diego, a median-income household would need to save for over 32 years for a down payment of $723,527! And that doesn’t even take into account the high rents that most members of our generation are paying because they can’t afford to buy and build equity.
If you are young, housing is your biggest expense. If you have kids, childcare is right up there, too, surpassing housing in some cases. And yet our childcare system is a market failure. In San Diego, the average annual cost for childcare for one infant in a licensed center is more than $19,000, according to the San Diego Foundation. For two kids, it could cost more than $33,000. That’s too expensive for most families, which means parents can’t afford to return to the workforce or contribute to our economy.
If my constituents have young kids, it doesn’t matter whether they are Republican, Democrat, or something else — they are talking to me about the cost of childcare. Despite all the data that investing in childcare is an incredible return on investment and that our economy loses $122 billion every year due to the childcare crisis, many of my colleagues still don’t understand the urgency of this issue. During the Build Back Better debate in 2021, one of my congressional colleagues (yes, a Democrat) asked me, “Isn’t there an aunt down the street that can take care of the kids?” While that may have been the case 40 years ago, today the answer is definitely no.
Young people don’t just want change, they need it. Despite what older generations say, the problem isn’t that millennials and Gen Z'ers can’t budget or don’t work hard enough or that we’re eating too much avocado toast; the problem is that the status quo simply isn’t working for millions of people. And when I talk to my friends and peers, they see the Democratic Party as the party of the status quo — as the institutionalists who are fighting to protect systems that don’t work to begin with.
Now is the time for change. Now is the time to rebuild and reimagine our systems and make them better. Now is the time to create a universal, affordable childcare system that meets every family’s and every provider’s needs. Now is the time to ramp up the housing supply, provide more relief to renters, and assist first-time homebuyers.
The problem isn’t that there are baby boomers or Gen X'ers in Congress; we need their experience and institutional knowledge. But it's also necessary to listen more to the young people of this country who are begging for their top concerns to finally be respected and addressed.
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