Stopping just short of asking, “So what are the kids up to these days,” the House Republican Policy Committee held a formal hearing Tuesday afternoon to better understand how to reach out and connect with Millennials – the generation characteristically pegged as being not interested in politics.
The hearing was held in the Rayburn House office building, packed with lawmakers, members of the committee, media, and Millennials themselves. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress and the head of the committee’s Millennial Task Force, chaired the hearing.
Stefanik – who admitted the hearing was her first time using a gavel – stated the unemployment rate among Millennials (10.1 percent), the current national debt ($18.3 trillion) and what it will be in ten years ($27.3 trillion), relating each astronomical number with how they will affect the Millennial generation.
The debt, the unemployment, and other ways the government is failing young people today “will continue to hamper our generation’s economic growth,” said Stefanik, adding that “we [the GOP] need to rethink” how to convey Republican traditional values to Millennials.
Stefanik gave each representative of the task force time for a brief introduction before calling on the four witnesses present who each gave testimony about their own research on the impact of Millennials and the importance of connecting with this “up for grabs” generation – a politically important voting bloc.
Kristen Soltis Anderson, co-founder of Echelon Insights and author of The Selfie Vote, explained in her testimony to the panel that Millennials are a generation that has come of age in an era of rapid change and diversity.
“Republicans should not fear these changes but embrace them,” she said. “…There’s much that’s waiting to be disrupted and made better by this generation.”
Jared Meyer of the Manhattan Institute said that most Millennials to “want to work independently,” but are halted because they are jaded from years of “unfunded promises.”
Keeping with the fad of these new-fangled Millennial kids, the hearing promoted the hashtag #GOPFuture throughout and at the end took a few questions submitted via Twitter.
Not being afraid of this “alien species” and learning to make traditional Republican values understandable and relatable to them was the theme of the two-plus hour hearing.
Although Congressman Ryan Costello (R- Penn.) may have simply summarized it best — “Let’s go youth!”
