After nearly a year of lobbying for the creator economy on Capitol Hill, MatPat and Stephanie Patrick have joined the official Congressional Creators Caucus, launched by Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Beth Van Duyne (R-TX).
The caucus, which includes Clarke, Van Duyne, other reps, and multiple creators like the Patricks, plans to educate not-so-internet-savvy members of Congress about how economically and socially significant the content creation industry has become–and how the people powering it need more support and protection.
“As digital content creators’ online presence continues to reach billions globally, Congress must work to ensure resources and protections are in place to support their success in this new era of start-ups,” Clarke said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to meet this moment. That is why I am proud to establish this caucus as a first-of-its-kind bipartisan forum for content creators and Congress to work together to address the challenges they face as nontraditional small business owners. Creators’ voices deserve to be heard throughout the policy-making process, and the Creators Caucus is the key to ensuring they are.”
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Van Duyne added, “The Creators Caucus hopes to bring better understanding to how these developing small businesses are operating, what struggles they face, and how Congress can work with them to foster growth, opportunity, safety, and security for our digital creators and their viewers alike.”
The caucus is supported by YouTube and Patreon, both of which have played major roles in driving revenue for creators. They’ve also helped drive the overall creator economy to its current size: $250 billion annually.
YouTube is a particularly weighty voice here; for years, it’s run studies showing its contribution to the U.S. economy. The most recent report, from Oxford Economics, showed that YouTube contributed over $45 billion to the U.S.’s GDP in 2023, and supported the equivalent of 430,000 full-time jobs. With the way the creator economy has expanded over the past two years, it’s almost certainly contributing even more now.
“The creator economy is a powerful economic engine in the United States, making significant contributions to GDP and job growth,” Alexandra Veitch, YouTube’s Senior Director of Government Affairs & Public Policy, said. “Creators are building business, growing audiences, and sharing their voices online. We are thankful to Representatives Clarke and Van Duyne for launching the Congressional Creators Caucus and look forward to continuing the work to support the growing creator ecosystem.”
When MatPat–who stepped down from hosting his popular Theorist channels in 2024–first began lobbying, he said things were dire. In one case, a legislator opened their session with, “Question one, what is Roku, and how is it different from YouTube?”
As we wrote at the time, these misunderstandings (which have notably cropped up in hearings with Meta and TikTok executives) seem silly on the surface. They make for a full day of memes on the site that used to be Twitter, with users banding together to mock how out of touch our leaders are.
But this complete lack of knowledge is a serious problem. Our industry is a force to be reckoned with, and right now, it receives very little consideration for things like tax laws and regulatory bills. Legislators often introduce bills that will affect the internet en masse, and while those bills rarely pass, if they did, they could send devastating ripples through a population that already relies on unsteady income. Meanwhile, creators have unique tax issues that are understood by few professionals.
Hopefully, with a real, established, official caucus in place, representatives will begin to learn more about creators. Pitching them as small business owners is smart; not only is that accurate, but it catches the ears of lawmakers who know supporting small biz is a surefire way to please constituents.
