Feb. 10, 2013

Congressional Black Caucus Outlines Agenda for 113th Congress
By Zenitha Prince

The 43-member Congressional Black Caucus at the beginning of the 113th Congress. Seated front
right is CBC Chair Marsha Fudge (D-Ohio) and former chair Emmanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). PHOTO: Courtesy/CBC Foundation

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Congressional Black Caucus will continue its fight to reverse policies adversely impacting communities of color during the first session of the 113th Congress.

Feb. 4, 2013

Blacks Should Expect More from Obama Administration, Panel Says
By Criscia Dawson  

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Howard University News Service

Economists, Scholars Call on Obama to Deal With Economic Discrimination
By Hazel Trice Edney

James H. Carr

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – A day-long summit to scrutinize the economic policies of the Obama administration has ended with clarion calls for the President to become more specific in dealing with racial discrimination that is causing economic and social injustices.

“As of last year, babies born in America are now majority children of color…This is really imperative and it’s a point that we need to really drive home to make more clear to policy makers,” said James H. Carr, a housing finance, banking and urban policy consultant with Opportunity Agenda, a New York City-based research center. “If we have a financial system – particularly housing finance - that can’t accommodate the fastest-growing ultimately majority population, can that be long-term healthy for the U.S. financial system? It certainly won’t be long-term healthy for wealth-growth and economic mobility in America.”

Carr was the luncheon keynote speaker for the nine-hour summit, sponsored by Howard University, Feb.1. It drew hundreds of economists, activists and public policy makers to the campus from around the country. Carr told the audience that the “single largest contributor to the racial wealth gap” is the home ownership rates of Latinos and African-Americans in comparison to Whites.

The home ownership rate for Latinos and African-Americans is in the mid to low 40 percentile in comparison to Whites, which is around 75 percent, Carr said. He called it “silly” to argue that people of color have reached the bounds of homeownership. “There’s a lot more room for home ownership among our population and that’s where the wealth creator is.”

Throughout the day, expert panelists outlined statistics and struggled to present solutions. But, most resolved that just about every new answer presents a new problem.

“We have to make sure that when we pay for these new tax cuts that we voted for, that we do it in a rational and comprehensive way,” said U. S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who serves on the House Committee on Education and Workforce.  “The last thing we want to do is to cut Social Security, Medicare, or education - things like that - in order to provide for these tax cuts and not have any money left over for a jobs bill.”

The economic summit was the fourth in a series and the second at Howard during the Obama Administration. In his first term, the summit was held to specifically discuss jobs.

At times, the experts appeared to struggle to explain why the Obama administration is not more forthcoming on the issue of race and the part it plays in America’s economic pains.

“The administration seems to be following an indirect approach for assisting distressed members of the community,” said Rodney Green, an urban economics professor at Howard who also serves as executive director of the university’s Center for Urban Progress. “A more direct approach would seem appropriate,” he said. “Racial inequalities have deepened in the last decade. While incomes for African-Americans have fallen 10 percent, they have fallen only 1 percent for White families. Relative Black wealth has fallen even further.”

Howard professor of political science, Lorenzo Morris, predicted that the President will eventually come around on the specific issue of race, but, by then it may be too late to invoke policies to deal with it.  “I certainly believe he will find his voice, but he won’t have a big stick to carry with it. It will just be a voice,” Morris said.

Perhaps the strongest outright criticism of the Obama administration came from economist Bernard E. Anderson, a professor emeritus at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about here,” Anderson said. “We’re talking about an economic system that is shot through with institutional discrimination against Black people that denies them opportunity to participate fully in this economy. And until we attack that head on we are going to continue to have racial inequality.”

He continued, “That’s why I think we need to not let the President off the hook in his second term. Black people are smart. They gave him a pass in the first term because they knew that if he ever raised the question of race that if he ever raised the question in the first term, he would never have a hope of being re-elected. I like to be candid about this. I’m unusually frank about this. He is not going to run again for anything. He does not deserve a pass anymore. Let him not only find his voice, but summon his carriage and use his political capital to address racial inequality. He owes that to the African-American community.”

Anderson pointed to the President’s inaugural address as clear evidence that he will continue to keep the issue of race on the back burner.

“What were the priorities he mentioned in his second inaugural address – wage equality for women, gay rights, immigration and energy; not a single blessed word on race,” he said. “Don’t let him off the hook. He doesn’t deserve to be let off the hook. I am not going to understand why he will not address this issue.”

Carr concluded his luncheon remarks with a list of recommendations on how to close the housing/wealth gap. Among his points:

• Make sure that the system actually provides credit to alternative forms of housing like cooperatives and small rental properties. “These are things that people of color, low income can afford to buy but they’re not supported by the mortgage finance systems of today.”
• Support comprehensive community reinvestments such as a housing and community infrastructure bank that has been proposed by Opportunity Agenda.
• Make sure that the system does something radically different than it does today like to support comprehensive community reinvestment.

Comprehensive community reinvestment is something that President Obama has stressed since his first term, but it needs to broaden to America’s grassroots communities, Carr said.

“The president when he was candidate Obama was eloquent and masterful in explaining all the reasons why investment in infrastructure as a stimulant for the economy would actually create long-term jobs and real economic growth and prosperity across race, ethnicity, income and wealth,” he said. “But, we also believe there needs to be an infrastructure bank that is on a more local level that focuses on the rehabilitation and new construction of rental and owner-occupied units that are designed for community residents.”

This redevelopment would include repairs of streets, roads, sewers, schools and perhaps even local mass transit opportunities, he said. Carr concluded that it would make no sense to argue that there’s no money for such initiatives.

“We had no money for the wars we just fought but we spent a whole lot of it,” he said to applause from the audience. “We need to ask for what we need… We need to make sure that the market is designed to take care of the need and the aspirations of people of color. And when it does, it will only be taking care of the needs and aspirations of the majority of America.”

Feb. 4, 2013

New CBC Chair Aims to Forge Bi-partisan Relationships
By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – U. S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), the new chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, says she believes opportunities for bi-partisan co-operation between the CBC and Republican legislators may be more prevalent than some believe.

“I certainly think that bi-partisanship is going to be important going forward…We have to, as we look at how polarized the House of Representatives is, we’re going to have to find ways that we can find some common ground,” Fudge said in an interview.

Fudge was unanimously elected to serve a two-year term as chair, succeeding Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), whose term ended at the close of the 112th Congress.

She is known for her bi-partisan relationships, such as the Restore our Neighborhoods Act of 2012 that she co-sponsored with then Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) to finance demolition of vacant, foreclosed and abandoned homes throughout the nation.

“The only way that that [bill] even got the light of day, quite frankly, and got unanimous vote in the House is because Steve LaTourette was one of the sponsors of the bill,” she spoke of her Republican colleague. “And every single urban community in this country could use those kinds of resources when we talk about just a growing number of vacant and abandoned buildings and Steven and I had been trying to figure out how we could do something to help our community. As we explained to both sides of the aisle, they went right on board because everybody in a lot of ways are in the same situation.”

Fudge says she believes this kind of bi-partisan co-operation is absent from Congress. Recent bi-partisan cooperation on gun control legislation has given a sign of hope. But, more often than not Congress has been at a stalemate on issues due to partisan politics.

As she leads the CBC the next two years, she said she believes her knack for coalescing will be to their benefit.

“I think that because I’ve already built certain kinds of relationships, when people on the other side of the aisle, our Republican colleagues, need assistance on our side, they will feel that I have more of a leadership role and would be more likely to come to me to talk to me about issues that they believe we can work together on.”

A former mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, Fudge describes herself as both liberal and conservative.

“Even though I am a staunch social liberal, I really truly am a fiscal conservative. Because I’ve had to be. When you’re the mayor of a city, you’ve got to balance your budget,” she said.

However, she indicates there are some issues on which she will not compromise. As a social liberal, she will no doubt lead the 43-member, mostly Democratic Caucus on some of the key bread and butter issues that their predominately Black constituents will need. Partisan disagreements often arise over fiscally conservative Republican attempts to cut social programs that socially liberal Democrats desire to keep.

“Obviously one of my major issues is poverty. I’m on the Agriculture Committee and I make sure that our children have decent meals in schools, that we don’t significantly cut food stamps and we make sure that our food banks are funded and that people have a place to live.”

Fudge is also concerned about a level of violence in Black communities that had reached astronomical levels long before the tragic Dec. 17 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

“We have to address this culture of violence in our community. I mean our young people are exposed to violence every day,” she said. “I understand all of the things that have gone along with the big kind of incidents like Newtown that raise our consciences and break our hearts, but our children are confronted with violence every day and what affect does that have on their lives going forward?”

Fudge was elected to Congress in 2008 in a special election following the death of Ohio Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who had represented the seat for nearly a decade. A former chief of staff to the popular Jones, Fudge has now earned her own Congressional reputation as a staunch advocate for the poor.

She describes herself through the eyes of the CBC which casted an unusual unanimous vote for her election: “Very, very strong in my views and my opinions and that I will fight for what I think is right. As well as I hope that they would say that I care so deeply about, not just the members of the Caucus obviously, but all of the people that we represent that I am never going to lose sight of why I’m there.”

With the re-election of President Obama, Fudge sees the next four years as “a strong opportunity for “our seniors, our disabled and our children.”

She concludes, “We’re not walking on egg shells; the President has been re-elected, we want to make sure that we are strong in the things that we believe in…We want to be at the table.”