Job Creation In The African American Community

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Ms. Fudge. Thank you for getting this hour tonight for us to talk about one of the most significant issues facing the American public. And I would also like to thank Oakland's Barbara Lee for her leadership. She has been myopic in making sure that not only the Black Caucus, but none of the caucuses nor the Democratic Caucus stray too far from the main theme that we have been pushing, which is that we need jobs, and we need them now.

Mr. Speaker, there's little question that the economists believe that the U.S. economy is in fact in a recovery mode. There are signs all around that we are coming out of the recession, but the recession continues to take its toll on the American public. We know that jobs always lag in the recovery. In fact, if you look at some of the Wall Street banks, you will find that many of them actually are showing huge profits, some of the top 10 banks--actually, the top 25 banks, some of whom received money from the taxpayers to help bail them out.

And so the question today, when we still have an anemic economy, is: Who's going to bail out the American public? Well, what we do know is that the jobless rate is now still hovering at about 10 percent. And if you break it down, as did our Chair, Barbara Lee, you will find out that many African Americans are the ones who are suffering. Why is that? Well, it's kind of simple. The weak labor markets in our country are in areas where we generally have high black populations. South Carolina is one. Michigan is the other. African Americans migrated to Michigan to work in the automobile industry. African Americans have been in South Carolina almost since 1619, when we came to this land. And so it is somewhat misleading to believe that we can address this issue of unemployment without some special emphasis on what's happening to African Americans who are also unemployed.

When you just look at the statistics, the economists say that we need to create 100,000 jobs a month just to absorb the new people coming into the job market. We are not creating jobs. In fact, we have not created the kinds of jobs that we need for the last three decades. We have not been able to generate a hundred thousand jobs a month.

I think the President was wise when he submitted to Congress the stimulus package. I think Congress was wise, or at least we were wise, to vote for it. Because inside this stimulus package is at least the opportunity for jobs for all people, but it provides minorities with a unique opportunity to connect with what I believe and what many others believe to be the next job creator, and that is in the field of energy.

We have significant dollars placed in the Department of Energy, where men and women who are citizens of our country can in fact seek new opportunities in that field. For example, I am convinced that in the days to come, men and women will call people to come out to do weatherization in their homes like they call a plumber today. People will call a weatherization specialist, who comes out, he surveys the place, he finds where there's a leak, where there's an energy leak, and they will seal it up. That's an entirely new arena--a whole new job area that we have not had before.

But it's also important to keep in mind that technology is eliminating jobs even as we try and produce them. I used to tell my staff members how frustrated I was when I go to the airport, as we all do twice a week, and look at the kiosk which all of the airlines now have, and the clerks behind the counter will direct you to the kiosk. I told my staff, I said, Do you realize what's happening? The people who are directing us to use the kiosk to get our ticket are also eliminating their jobs.

It's just a matter of time, Mr. Speaker, before we're going to go to airports that are not going to be ``peopled'' by the ticket clerks, as we see today. And everybody will simply go use a credit card or some special card and they will be able to get their tickets. For most of the Members of Congress, most of us go to the airport with our tickets in hand anyway, because you can now get your ticket printed on the computer. So I think we're eliminating jobs and there's a need for us to do something, and do something significant.

Now there are those who are saying, Look, the job market will take care of itself. The markets will always engage in self-correction. That is what has gotten us into the economic collapse that we have experienced over the last year and a half, is waiting for the markets to do the right thing and waiting for some of the institutions that were able to function without strong regulations to do the right thing. They did not. And they hurt us. And we were hurt perhaps more than any other group.

So what I think we are going to have to do is do a jobs bill, a serious jobs bill. And by the way, I was delighted that in our meeting with the President last week that he said to us that he strongly supports a summer youth jobs program. I thought that was the most significant thing that came out of the meeting. Why? Because in about 8 weeks, schools will turn out all over the United States. Everywhere in this country kids will be going home, and these kids this summer will be going home unemployed to unemployed parents.

Now, it does not take a physicist or a nuclear scientist to look at that situation and see that it is going to be chaotic at the very least, and so we need a summer youth jobs bill, and we need it now. We need it quickly so that the bureaucrats can have things in place by the time school is out, so that there won't be a long period of time during which kids are just aimlessly walking up and down the streets. Because we all have been kids, and we all know that we were not at our highest level of thoughtfulness and can do dumb things at that age. So I'm thinking that it might be helpful if we move that summer youth jobs program to the forefront.

And I am not, Mr. Speaker, convinced that we don't need something else. I don't think we need another $876 billion stimulus, but I do believe that we've got to do something that would create jobs directly. And Paul Krugman, the economist who also is a columnist in The New York Times, has suggested--and I agree--that perhaps we need to think about the fact that the United States Government can create jobs that people can actually use. I'm not suggesting that we need to approve money at the level that we did for the WPA during the Great Depression, from 1929 through the thirties, but I am saying that there can be some kind of direct jobs program put in place that will enable folks to get jobs quickly. If we don't, we're going to find that this job market is going to continue to hemorrhage.

When you think about the fact, as Congresswoman Lee mentioned earlier, that the States are laying off employees, cities are laying off employees, by the time we find employment for those government workers on the local level who lost their jobs to get some kind of job, we still have not done much, because we haven't dealt with the people who have been on the unemployment rolls.

In my committee last week, Ms. Fudge, we had a person who testified before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming who said that he was opposed to giving employment insurance. He also went on further to say that if you give unemployment insurance, it will make people lazy. Now, somebody like me who spent time growing up in public housing and heard people saying that welfare people love to have babies so they could get another $100 a month is almost laughable, but it is also believed by many. So we need to keep in mind that there will always be push-back against what we are trying to do.

But the American public needs to go to work, right now start going to work. And most economists believe that unemployment will continue at at least 8 percent or higher into 2012. We can't afford to have that size of our population without employment. It is dehumanizing when you can't take care of yourself, and we're going to find more and more people doing what I have seen in Kansas City at the church my son pastors, where middle class people, people who were in the U.S. middle class, are now unemployed. We have had Ph.D.'s coming to my office, trying to get an internship just so they can get in and hopefully get a job. So when people say, Well, there are jobs out there for everybody; they just need to go and get them, that's absolutely ludicrous. It is ridiculous, and it plays the American public as fools, because there are real human beings with real families who are losing their homes.

What people don't realize is, when you lose your job, you can't make your mortgage payment. If you can't make your mortgage payment, you lose your home. If you lose your home, your credit is ruined. You can't buy a car. You can't hardly buy anything. Even today, with an 800 credit score, you are barely going to be able to buy a new car. So I think we are having a recovery, but the recovery is not strong enough, and it's not moving quickly enough.

So, Congresswoman Fudge, I appreciate the fact that this issue--through you getting this before the American public tonight--is going to resonate with a lot of people who are unemployed, but it will also resonate, I hope, with men and women of goodwill who believe that the American public must always take care of the American public.

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