The Millennial vote is here to stay -- and it demands progressive action.

In the days leading up to the 2012 presidential election, journalists from across the political spectrum dedicated large portions of airtime and print space to answering one critical question: would Millennials turn out to vote? The resounding hypothesis seemed to be yes, but in significantly lower numbers than they did in 2008. And we’ve heard their logic before: young people are apathetic, jaded, lazy, and spoiled. 

Interestingly, the polling numbers seemed to back up their conclusions. In mid-October, with less than a month to go until the election, the Harvard Institute of Politics released a study that seemed damning to any campaign relying on the youth vote. The study indicated that between 2008 and 2012, the percentage of “definite young voters” decreased dramatically from 63 percent to 48 percent and the percentage of young people describing themselves as “politically engaged” had dropped from 43 percent to 25 percent.

But on Election Day, Millennials proved the numbers wrong. A staggering 23 million members of the largest, most diverse, and most progressive generation in American history made their voices heard. Some stood in line for hours, some sent in absentee ballots, and some went the extra mile and worked for a campaign or registered their peers to vote. But no matter how they did it, a solid 50 percent of eligible Millennial voters cast ballots in this election—a number that mirrors the 2008 turnout nearly exactly.

Millennial America proved that it’s a political force that will not be discounted, that will not be silenced, and that will not let this country make decisions without its input. We defied expectations and made it to the polls because, despite our current political climate of hyper-partisanship and gridlock, Millennials still believe government can be a force for social good. And we’ll keep working toward making that more of a reality now that the election has passed.

As the post-election stats keep rolling in, it’s becoming ever more apparent that voters between 18 and 29 were critical to President Obama’s re-election. According to data published by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, Millennial voter turnout in swing states averaged 58 percent. If Millennials had not voted, the critical states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would have swung Republican rather than Democratic.

Millennials helped decide this election and will continue to exert their influence. We may be young and idealistic, but we are not blind to the shortcomings of our political system. The polling may have been skewed because we don’t always engage with politics through the same means the generations before us did, but we are dedicated to ensuring that the political institutions we inherit represent our interests, our values, and our principles.

We voted because we haven’t given up and we know that government can improve lives. Campus Progress reports that 64 percent of Millennial voters support the DREAM Act, a bill providing pathways to legal status for undocumented students. Eighty-four percent support accessible, affordable contraception for women. Sixty-two percent favor the legalization of gay marriage. Eighty percent still believe in the American Dream.

And every day, we’re using social media to share information and opinions, and to jumpstart political movements to push forward on these values and beliefs. We’re blogging about the issues that affect us. We’re entering the corporate world and pressuring it to be more socially responsible as we do. We’re pushing for progress, and now, through a Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network project, Government By and For Millennial America, Millennials across the country are developing both pragmatic and visionary policy ideas that speak to the issues that influenced our votes.

Despite our optimism, we are also acutely aware of our government’s inadequacies. Millennials overwhelmingly support increased government involvement in improving public education and making college more affordable, and we believe that our current economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.

Millennials want a government that provides for its people equitably. We want a government that rewards hard work with fair labor practices and reasonable hours. We want a government that encourages its youth to enroll in colleges that it ensures are accessible, affordable pathways to future success. We want a government that fosters its people’s prosperity and isn’t afraid to make unpopular choices to do so.

We voted because we are engaged, we want change, and we’re not afraid to work for it. The Millennial vote is here to stay. As we become a more critical voting block, our lawmakers must become more hospitable to progressive ideas. Our generation is not interested in maintaining the status quo. We don’t want to wait and see if the ineffectual legislation of the past pans out in the future. To continue to earn the support of Millennial voters, our politicians must overcome partisanship and gridlock and move forward on critical issues like the environment, education, and social justice. Millennial voters will continue to vote, and we’re voting for progress.

Jean-Ann Kubler is a former Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network Summer Fellow and a senior government major at Skidmore College.

In order to sustain the progressive coalition that re-elected President Obama, we can create spaces for civic engagement among young Americans at the local level.

Young voters surprised pundits and Republicans again this year as we turned out in record numbers to vote, joining key constituencies including African Americans, Hispanics, and women to reelect President Obama. Composing 19 percent of the electorate, up from 18 percent in 2008 and 12 percent in 2004, young Americans demonstrated their importance to a growing progressive coalition.

Many question, however, whether our diverse and unprecedented coalition will be able to build on this foundation and sustain the power of our ideas and values throughout our lifetimes. Or, like the Reagan coalition after 1990, are we fated to fracture as a political force by 2016? Some suggest that the strong generational power of today’s 18-30-year-olds will become inconsequential as the hype dies down and we grow up. Our next steps are critical.

Young progressives are a distinct and large population that favors pragmatic problem-solving, opportunity for all, justice and equality, and government’s promotion of such ideals. Identifying more strongly with values than with a political party, we are a significant portion of President Obama’s alliance. Yet given the diversity of the Obama coalition, someone must lead productive grassroots dialogue, finding a broader progressive voice. As members of the largest and most diverse generation in American history, young progressives are the best candidates for the job.

Rather than waiting 30 or 40 years to see how this pans out, let’s write the story ourselves today. Young people are powerful influencers of elections, and we’ve built a strong foundation on which to stand. But it’s up to us to define citizenship for our generation and maintain a unified commitment to progressive values to solidify the political shift.

One lacking aspect of Reagan’s group of committed, conservative supporters was a shared vision of active citizenship and a space within which to exercise it. When the candidate went away, they left. With our core values gaining increased momentum, civic engagement is more important today than ever.

The renaissance of bold millennial progressivism will not be realized in the federal offices of Washington, but on America’s sidewalks and street corners. Generations before us used Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, consciousness raising groups, and bowling leagues to facilitate civic infrastructure; today, we must take a critical look at how we support people and ideas to build a better America for all. Our model is still being formed, but we need to build an infrastructure that will make the progressive coalition last beyond the campaign cycle.

With this in mind, Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline is capitalizing on a unique moment in history to engage young people in activating progressive ideas across the nation. Obama for America led a national dialogue throughout the election on what values shape our nation, but constructive exchangement must continue in the context of community action. In order to do this, we need to create spaces to facilitate the exchange of ideas on the local level, engaging all demographics of the progressive coalition. By leading conversations on local issues in 15 cities, we are supporting and empowering individuals to be active citizens and translate the national dialogue to the community level.

The Pipeline chapter in New Orleans, LA is holding discussions among young progressives about public policy issues in its city. The members pick a new topic every few weeks, build a diverse group of people working in different fields, and engage in dialogue about potential solutions for problems facing their neighborhoods. The result is better informed, more engaged people, a community of progressives, and a platform for influence.

In San Francisco, CA, the Pipeline chapter convened tech start-up leaders to create a space to refine ideas for social entrepreneurship. By creating a local space to support young people enacting innovative ideas, members are building an infrastructure for progressives outside of politics. Moreover, they are engaging individuals from both the public and private sectors.

Creating progressive infrastructure will ultimately yield decisions that change our economy and society. For example, I was struck recently when a relative turned down a lucrative deal because the organization was enacting anti-gay policies in conducting business. In making this decision, he took a stand for what he believed in and created a ripple effect that will influence that business’s chances of success.

Hands-on opportunities to connect constituencies and build a progressive community are also sprouting up across the nation. Organizations such as the Future Project are creating innovative ways to connect young people with students and inspire brighter futures. At Groundswell, organizers are helping community members leverage their collective buying power to bolster the local clean energy sector. Like Pipeline, both of these organizations are leveraging the power of the diverse progressive coalition.

To borrow from Roosevelt Institute President Felicia Wong, who spoke to a group of us young progressives last weekend in Hyde Park, NY, “Great ideas and great people rise up together.” Before we begin the next campaign cycle, let’s think critically about how civic engagement translates progressive values into change. When dozens, hundreds, thousands of local actions take place and we create a shared space to support them, we catalyze progress. If the conversation on what ideas and values shape our nation stagnates, we risk losing the foundation progressives have built over the last five years.

Monika Johnson is the co-Chapter Head for the Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline in Washington, DC and a member of the Pipeline Advisory Committee.

As part of our series "A Rooseveltian Second Term Agenda," a long-term plan to provide justice on the job for all workers.

Now that the election is over, our hope is that we can finally move beyond the vacuous invocations of an imaginary middle class where everyone is in the same boat. It’s time to get real about the concrete policies needed to take on the multiple inequalities that run deep through the U.S. labor market. And we’re not talking about the “skills mismatch,” another red herring routinely flung into this debate by both sides (including by President Obama as recently as the last week of the campaign).

What we’re talking about is a broad, multi-year agenda to give America’s workers a living wage and voice on the job and to take on the continuing exclusion of workers of color, immigrants, and women from good jobs. The media may have discovered inequality last year with the surprise emergence of Occupy Wall Street, but in truth, there is a 30-year backlog of policies to fix the extreme maldistribution of wages and opportunity in the labor market.

First, we have to make our core workplace standards much stronger – whether it’s in terms of wages, health and safety, or voice on the job. That means raising the minimum wage so that it’s a meaningful floor again (some good news: voters in Albuquerque, San Jose, and Long Beach raised theirs last week). It means updating health and safety regulations written in the 1970s. And it means restoring the right to organize, because at this point, virulent employer opposition and retaliation has rendered U.S. labor law obsolete. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. workers say they would like to be represented by a union, but only 11.8 percent actually are. This is what happens when one out of four workers is fired illegally for attempting to organize a union while employers face minimal penalties.

Second, we have to take on the profound reorganization of the American workplace. The poster child for precarious work is temp jobs – but subcontracting has had a much broader impact, as janitors, laundry workers, warehouse workers, security guards, food service workers, and millions of others have been outsourced to low-wage firms. A good model for a solution is California’s recent law making companies liable for minimum wage and overtime violations by their subcontractors, recognizing that end-user firms such as Walmart exert considerable control over working conditions down their supply chains.   

Third, we have to double down on enforcement. A 2008 study of Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York found that 26 percent of low-wage workers were paid less than the minimum wage and 76 percent were underpaid or not paid at all for their overtime hours. Yet the number of federal wage and hour inspectors is still below 1980 levels, and it would take 131 years for OSHA investigators to inspect each workplace just once. Until employers face substantial costs to their bottom line (as is true in other bodies of law, such as environmental regulation and employment discrimination law), practices like wage theft, retaliation against workers trying to organize a union, and independent contractor misclassification will continue unabated.

Fourth, we have to do a better job of leveraging the government’s capital. Public money touches millions of private-sector jobs, whether by purchasing goods and services for the government or by funding everything from schools and bridges to health care and social services. There are plenty of innovative models to ensure that this money results in good jobs, whether it’s responsible contracting policies (in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Illinois), living wage laws (in more than 140 cities and counties), or accountable economic development policies (in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and New York City, among others).

Fifth, we have to explicitly break down systemic labor market exclusions of people of color, immigrants, women, the unemployed, and people with criminal records. For example, advocates are pushing the U.S. Department of Labor to finally end the exemption of home care workers from minimum wage and overtime protection, and cities across the country are passing “ban the box” policies to reduce hiring barriers for people with arrest or conviction records.  

But we also have to challenge de facto exclusions. A good example is targeted hiring and training programs on publicly funded projects, which in our mind will be crucial to solving the escalating (and chronically under-reported) economic crisis in communities of color. A great example is Portland’s 2009 residential retrofitting program, which mandated living wages and local hiring from designated training programs. As of last year, the program’s workers earned median wages of $18 per hour; fully 84 percent were local residents, nearly half of them people of color. While unemployment is still at Depression-era levels in many black communities, we know what works to employ those still excluded from access to the labor market.

A final word on why we think these policies (and many others; see the long-form version here) are politically viable. In communities across the country, there is an undeniable thirst for justice on the job and investment in local communities. This is true not just for raising the minimum wage, which consistently polls in the 70-80 percent range, but also policies such as paid sick days, increased funding for elder care and child care, cracking down on wage theft, using taxpayer money to create living wage jobs, and restoring the right to organize.

(If you doubt support for organizing, consider the recent wave of strikes by Walmart workers, or New York’s taxi workers organizing for better pay even though they are independent contractors, or Palermo’s pizza workers in Wisconsin staying out on strike for three months and now pressuring Costco to boycott their employer.)

The real question is whether President Obama and Democrats in Congress understand that raising taxes on the top 2 percent is only the first step on a long road toward building a sustainable living wage economy in the U.S. Our hope lies in the growing recognition among progressives that it will take the pressure and power of social movements to convince him to walk that road with us.

Annette Bernhardt and Dorian Warren are Fellows at the Roosevelt Institute.

As part of our series "A Rooseveltian Second Term Agenda," advice on revamping the tax code to raise the revenue we need.

Our current tax system is a toxic legacy of the George W. Bush years. It loomed over Obama's first four years, bearing deficits that limited the scope of economic stimulus, drove inequality to astonishing levels, and led directly to the debt limit showdown of the summer of 2011 that forced us into even more dangerous policies. President Obama's second term offers a long overdue opportunity to restore the promise of progressive taxation and revenues that are adequate to our long-term economic priorities. It requires both short-term and long-term action.

The greatest failure of the tax system is not that it’s too complicated or inefficient or that there are too many “special-interest loopholes,” as House Speaker John Boehner put it on the day after the election. It's that it doesn't raise enough money and it encourages all sorts of manipulation because of the differential rates for investment income and income from work. These are not things that developed over time, as if by some natural process – they are the product of specific decisions made in 2001 and 2003 by Republican-controlled Congresses that used the budget reconciliation process to avoid any bipartisan compromise.

Here are some principles that the administration should hold to in restoring adequate and progressive taxation:

1. Start from the law, not current tax policy. Under the law, the Bush tax cuts expire on January 2, 2013 and revert to their levels at the prosperous end of the 1990s. This expiration along with several temporary tax cuts that expire at the same time and the budget sequester devised to escape the House GOP blackmail on the debt ceiling in 2011 is what's known as “the fiscal cliff.” There will be an effort to negotiate a deal on taxes and spending before we hit the cliff out of fear that expiration of all the cuts at once would tip the country back into recession. But the effect won't be felt at once, and there's plenty of time to negotiate a new round of cuts once the law as written goes into effect. There is no reason to negotiate based on rates that are set to expire within weeks or days.

Under the law, capital gains rates will rise to 20 percent from 15 percent, dividends will be taxed at the same rate as regular income, and two provisions that limit personal deductions and exemptions for the wealthy will come back into effect. All tax rates will rise, but the tax code will instantly be fairer, by every definition, than it was in December. From that baseline – which is not some accident; it's what the law calls for – we can have a debate about which rates should be permanently lowered. There's a strong argument, for example, for bringing the bottom rate back down to 10 percent, given that these are the households that were hit hardest during the recession and saw few gains even during the prosperous years before 2008.

2. Don't try to define “the rich” with arbitrary thresholds. In its first four years, the Obama administration's tax policy was hamstrung by its commitment to the $250,000 line – that no household with taxable income lower than a quarter of a million dollars should face any kind of tax increase and any increase should apply only to the income above $250,000. Later, the line became a million dollars as the administration tried to craft what it called “The Buffett Rule” to remedy Warren Buffett's recognition of the absurdity that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. These new thresholds would be grafted onto the tax code on top of the existing rate brackets. For example, households with incomes below the quarter-million line would keep the preferential rates for capital gains and dividends, while it would go up for those above it. These thresholds would add a new level of complexity to the tax code, sharply reduce the revenues that could be gained, and reinforce the impression that taxes are a sort of punishment for the rich. It's a lot simpler, more efficient, and infinitely fairer to say that a single person who makes, say, $80,000 from capital gains alone should pay the same rate, no more and no less, than a comparable household that earns $80,000 from work. Right now, the first household would pay less. With the same rates for all income, rates can be held down and we can maintain the low-end cuts, such as the 10 percent rate for middle-class households, and gain enough revenue for the future. Artificial new thresholds, which would apply to some forms of income and not others, will make this much more difficult.

3. Consider one new source of revenue – and make it a “Pigovian” one.  Even an ideal income tax system, one in which income from any source is taxed in the same way and distorting deductions are kept to a minimum, is unlikely to raise sufficient revenues to support the level of investment the country needs in the long run. Adding one additional source of revenue will not only help to close the revenue gap, but it can serve vital purposes as well. (Such taxes, which have a dual purpose of raising revenue and reducing some undesirable activity, such as smoking, are known as “Pigovian,” after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou.) The two leading candidates would be a tax on carbon and a very small tax on financial transactions. The former would have some of the same effect as a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions that cause climate change, with less complexity, and could also fund clean energy research and job creation. The latter would generate revenue from the still thriving financial industry, while putting a little bit of friction into transactions and reducing the payoff – and the risk – created by strategies that rely on massive, fast trading. While those strategies weren't the main cause of the 2008 financial meltdown, they do play a role in creating instability (such as the “flash crash” of 2010). Either of these, or both, would helpfully supplement the income tax, the payroll tax (which supports Social Security and Medicare), the corporate income tax, and federal excise taxes. 

Mark Schmitt is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.