Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami/Drew Hammill, 202-226-7616
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Capitol Hill Day at the “Opportunities For All –Pathways Out of Poverty Summit: A Discussion on Race, Politics, and Policy” this morning in the Capitol Visitor Center. Below are the Speaker’s remarks.
“Good morning. Thank you all very much for the invitation to be with you this morning to join the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation 40th Annual Legislative Conference to Capitol Hill Day, advancing the mission, ‘Opportunities For All –Pathways Out of Poverty Summit: A Discussion on Race, Politics, and Policy.’
“I am pleased to be here with Dr. Elsie Scott. Thank you for you for your leadership of the CBC Foundation, and thank you to my colleague, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the distinguished chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. We call the Black Caucus the conscience of the Congress. Without the ideas, the support, the advocacy, the impatience, the continued enthusiasm and commitment of the CBC, President Obama and the Congress could not have made such remarkable progress for the American people. But much more needs to be done.
“I want to thank Donald Payne for his very kind introduction. The issues that he talked about are issues that we have all worked together on.
“Let me first begin by acknowledging that last weekend we our nation lost a very special person, Dr. Ronald Walters – a civil rights leader, scholar, and a friend and adviser to many policymakers, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and beyond. In his youth, Dr. Walters organized sit-ins at lunch counters and marched for justice. Throughout his life, he used his understanding of policy to effect change from within the halls of power.
“Dr. Walters was a fierce believer that, in his words, ‘If it’s morally right, it can't be politically wrong.’ With that principle in mind, Democrats continue to work to strengthen the middle class, including permanently cutting taxes for 98 percent of the American people and preserving Social Security.
“Now let me just talk a little bit about this Pathway Out of Poverty Summit and the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in this regard. This is very important for the people that we know, that we represent, that we want to help. But this pathway out of poverty, this bringing people into the middle class, is essential to our democracy. Our democracy depends on a strong middle class. I know Mr. Clyburn talked earlier about the diversity in our Caucus, that we always don’t agree on every issue. One thing we agree upon is that the disparity of wealth, the disparity of income, the disparity of wages, the disparity of equity and ownership in our country, must be changed. That is the unifying principle of the Democratic Party. And that is why we must continue to go forward, and we are not going back.
“We take great pride in the leadership of President Barack Obama. Without his victory, without his leadership, without his inspiration, we could not have passed the Recovery Act, which created or saved 3.3 million jobs already. We know that African Americans have been disproportionately affected by the recession; the Recovery Act put many African Americans back to work. But not nearly enough. Additionally, it has provided more than $600 million in lending to African American-owned small businesses.
“What we are especially proud of is that we made the largest investment in college aid in our nation’s history, including directly investing more than $2.5 billion in HBCUs and other Minority Serving Institutions. Congresswoman Lee has been fighting this fight on the Appropriations Committee, and we try to get this many million and that many million and could we double our number in a number of years. And now, we went drastically from a fight where we were like $7 million when we started, to $2.5 billion for Minority Serving Institutions.
“We think this is essential not only for the education of our children—which is the most important initiative that we have to give them opportunity—but also so that these historically black colleges and universities can have the resources to have the research centers so they can attract other dollars for research, to teach us more about what is happening health-wise and otherwise in the black community. So this is money that is put there so that it can grow and attract other capital. Capital will keep the talent at these universities, attract other talent, that talent will attract other capital. Our students will benefit. Our country will make progress.
“We passed historic health insurance reform. Secretary Sebelius spoke so eloquently about its provisions. And again, tribute to the Congressional Black Caucus how every step of the way, we tried to address the health disparities, issues. In my own district in San Francisco in Bayview Hunters Point, we had clusters of cancer that were totally unexplainable. We want to be able to say that we are addressing that. But even apart from that, we know that there are increased instances, whether it is heart disease, cancer, diabetes, you name it, in the minority community. We must change that. And we must change that for our children. We must change it for our families. We must change it for our entire country.
“We know a great deal has to be done about jobs. But let’s talk about, just for a moment, how we got here. We got here because there was a policy in our country that said: “Let some succeed, and if it trickles down to others, that would be a good thing, but if it doesn’t, so be it.” Well, we are not going back to the failed policies where recklessness on Wall Street has caused joblessness on Main Street; where people’s homes, their jobs, their pensions, their savings, their children’s education are threatened because of recklessness on Wall Street. We are not going back to a place where they can say, ‘We will privatize the gain. When all goes well, we will get very rich at the top. But when it goes poorly, we will nationalize the risk, and the taxpayer will have to pick up the tab and people will have to lose their jobs.’ That day is over. Thank you, President Obama.
“So when we are talking about the creation of jobs, all of this legislation, whether it is the Recovery Act, whether it is the health bill—think of it, just think of your friends, your neighbors, your family members, yourself. If you wanted to start a business or if you wanted to be self employed to follow your artistic pursuits or if you wanted to change jobs, you are now free to do that. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: that’s what this bill is about, a healthier life and the liberty to pursue your happiness. And minority-owned businesses are the lifeblood – the future – of our country. The cost of health care has been oppressive. Now, we are free from that.
“I think it is really important to note the following things because as I traveled around the country intensely the past weeks as Congress was in recess—I met with my colleague Sheila Jackson Lee, who was here earlier, in Houston, and with maybe 20 ministers. I have met with ministers around the country. I hear from them. You know I am from Baltimore, born and raised, so my connections are there. But in my district in San Francisco as well, we are blessed with that leadership and inspiration. And what I heard them say was that we really need jobs to give people a hope, a glimmer of hope that something is there for them, that otherwise they may tend to withdraw and give up hope. Some ministers told me that sometimes people come to church and they stay all day, as long as there is something going on, because that is the only hope that they have, the only real connection they have to other people that are optimistic about the future.
“And we really have to get a clear communication about what it is we are doing here, how it is relevant to the lives of the American people, and how important the Obama legacy and leadership is to the success of all Americans, not just the privileged few. The health care bill was about that—health care as a right for all, not just a privilege for the few.
“There are forces at work out there, whether it is the insurance industry, whether it is the banks and the credit card rates and the rest, whether it is the power companies who would like to maintain the status quo, the way it was before the President took office. We are not going back to that. We can’t go back to that if we want a pathway out of poverty. And that pathway is not just about wages. It’s about ownership. It’s about equity. And that’s why I am so proud that we’ll be hopefully, receiving from the Senate—we already passed it in the House—the small business bill that hopefully we will pass in the next couple of weeks. We are waiting for the Senate to act upon it. The House already has. And that will be very important to small businesses. Again, because it is not just about wages. It’s about ownership, and we want the community to have all of that opportunity.
“The ‘Opportunities For All – Pathways Out of Poverty’ agenda is really important for the country, as I said before, as we work together to strengthen our economy for all Americans. The CBC has shined a bright light on those who have faced long-term economic hardship. It is not just about putting people back to work. We must do that. But there aren’t enough jobs. Some people haven’t had the opportunity to work to their capacity, to their credentials, to their aspirations. We must create new jobs. Good-paying, living wage at least, jobs.
“And President Obama, when he set forth his first budget, he said we are going to lower taxes for the middle class, which he has done; we are going to reduce the deficit, which we are working on; and we are going to create jobs around three pillars: investments in health care for all Americans, and we passed that bill; investments in innovation and education, and we passed that higher education bill, more needs to be done at elementary and secondary level; and we are going to invest in new, green technologies for the future where our young people, whether they are in the cities or in urban areas, can be on the ground floor for a green revolution of good-paying, clean energy jobs for the future. More needs to be done there. But it has to be an expansion of jobs. It is not the usual cycle of unemployment—high unemployment, low unemployment. No, it is about expanding this economy so that many more people have much more opportunity and a pathway out of poverty.
“The issue of poverty is a moral issue — we know it’s mentioned for the poor, mentioned thousands of times in the Bible. All of our churchgoing friends, we hope, will heed that message and that instruction from the Bible that God loves poor people in a very special way and have to treat them in a very special way, but we don’t want them to be poor any longer.
“Under President Obama’s leadership, and with the cooperation and leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus, we passed the legislation that I have mentioned and more to come. Economists have told us that if we did not do what we had done — the Recovery Act, Cash for Clunkers, etc. — if we had not done what we had done — we would have 8.5 million more people out of work. 8.5 million—that would be a depression. The President has pulled us back from that. The unemployment rate would be 14.5 percent. You’re familiar with that because in the African American community, it is closer to that in some communities than the 9.5 that we have nationally. But it would be even worse. And then our deficits would be soaring.
“There are those who value the contribution of every person in our country – value the beauty of our diversity. Others think about the table in the board room and what it’s going to mean to the bottom line of that corporation but no thought or connection to that kitchen table. Barbara Lee never lets anybody forget which table is more important in our country.
“When you leave here, I want you to tell your friends that we need to endorse what the President has put out there. It isn’t all accomplished; it’s very hard to dig out of the policies of the past, immediately. But we’re going in a new direction — to take our country to place where many more people participate in the prosperity of America. We are not going back to the failed policies. We’re going to preserve Social Security, we’re going to create jobs in America with our ‘Make It In America’ initiative, and we’re going to give tax cuts to the middle-class as opposed to privatizing Social Security, sending jobs overseas, and giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America at the expense of our budget and our opportunities for other people.
“Tell your friends: preserve Social Security, ‘Make It In America,’ tax cuts for the middle-class. Tell your friends that in the first eight months of 2010, more private-sector jobs were created under President Obama’s leadership than in the eight years of the Bush Administration. Did you know that?
“You’ve come to storm the Hill, to make sure that every Member of Congress here understands that you are watching, that you want to see actions taken legislatively that improve the lives of all of the American people, that address the particular concerns of the African American community. We’ve talked about discrimination in the past, we’ve talked about many issues, but one of the biggest civil rights issues that we have is economic opportunity for all Americans so that we can pursue the American dream, so that we can honor the vows of our founders for ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’ And we can honor the service of our men and women in uniform and our veterans to give them a future worthy of the sacrifices they have made for our country. And so that we can honor the aspirations of our children so that they have every possible opportunity to reach their personal fulfillment. And indeed, that is in the interest of strengthening America.
“So, thank you Congressional Black Caucus Foundation for your leadership. Thank you to my colleagues in the Congress whom I have recognized — Congresswoman Lee, Congressman Payne, Congresswoman Watson — but many others have joined and they are 42 strong in the Congress. And thank each and every one of you for taking the time to be super-citizens to come to Capitol Hill, to make your voice heard, to make a difference in public policy that will improve the lives of all Americans.
“Thank you giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts with you.”