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Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Donna Christensen. I am very pleased that you took this time out this evening to give us an opportunity to continue to focus on our top priority in the Congressional Black Caucus. We are absolutely focused like a laser beam on the fact that jobs are needed so desperately in all of these communities that we represent.
We recognize that unemployment is unprecedented, at its highest levels perhaps since the 1980s across this country, with 9.1 percent being that of the country. But we also recognize that in minority communities it is so much higher; in the Latino community, 11.3 percent; in the African American community, 16.7 percent.
Why are we focused like a laser beam on this issue? Because we understand the pain that is going on. We understand the increasing desperation. We understand the growing hopelessness and, as public policymakers, we must do everything that we possibly can not only to do actual job creation, but to help people out there understand that we know what's going on. We feel their pain, and we are prepared to do everything possible to come to their aid.
So there are those who may get tired of us talking about it. There are those who wonder why we took our vacation time and traveled across this country in five cities with these job fairs and town halls that we did, but it is all because we understand, perhaps better than others, this pain and this desperation and this feeling of hopelessness; and that's not good for this country.
So you're absolutely correct. The Congressional Black Caucus went to Detroit. We went to Cleveland. We went to Miami. We went to Atlanta. And we went to California, Los Angeles. And what did we see? As it has been said over and over again, thousands upon thousands of people in line desperate to be able to talk with employers.
I must extend a big thank you to employers. They heard our call and they showed up. And they were at each of these meetings, these job fairs that we had; and people were able to fill out applications, to learn what the process is for that particular employer, to be able to talk with someone. And I had job seekers in Los Angeles who said to me: Ms. Waters, you know, I may not get a job, but I appreciate the opportunity that the Congressional Black Caucus is affording me and others to be able to take a shot at it, to be able to talk with someone.
So in Los Angeles, in my own community, 10,000 people showed up. We organized it in ways that they wouldn't have to stand in line for long periods of time; and thanks to the Crenshaw Christian Center that has the Faith Dome that holds 10,000 people, we were able to get people off that sidewalk through that dome and to those employers where we set up tents for 170 employers who came behind the dome, and it worked very well.
Congresswoman, I want you to know this past weekend, as I traveled throughout the area, people came up to me and said: Ms. Waters, I got a job. I can't tell you how great that made me feel. And, of course, it was only a small number of people that I encountered. But just to have them say, thank you, I received a job, was extremely impressive and inspiring and made me feel so very, very good. We are going to follow up with the employers and have them feed us back the information about how many people they were able to hire so that we can give a report on that.
But in all of this, I am so worried that the unemployment in the African American community may reach as high as 20 percent. Our communities have been hit hard. I heard you allude to the foreclosures that we're experiencing in our communities. Our communities were targeted. They were targeted by financial institutions because they saw that people were eager to have homes. They understood that if you gave people an opportunity, that they would take advantage of it. But what they didn't say was that they were coming up with all of these exotic products, products that literally got people into homes, but it could not be sustained because of the way these products were organized.
You had people who were told: you don't have to pay anything down; you just have to pay a little down. Don't worry about the resets; don't worry about what will happen 2 years from now. And these exotic products were products that had the devil in the details. And so people entered into mortgages they certainly could not afford down the road; and so our communities are overwhelmed with foreclosures, the loss of wealth, the loss of the only wealth that many of our families certainly had and could ever have for years to come.
I just want to share with you, in addition to the joblessness and the foreclosures and the loss of homes, the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.
These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data in 1984, and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009. The median wealth of United States households in 2009 was $113,149 compared to $5,677 for blacks and $6,325 for Hispanics. The percentage of African Americans with no wealth has increased. About 35 percent of black households and 31 percent of Hispanic households have zero or negative net worth in 2009 compared with 15 percent of white households.
Basically, just looking at the joblessness and the lack of wealth, the decreasing wealth tells the story. No communities can survive under these conditions. Everybody must be concerned about unemployment in general, but specifically these communities that are so bad off under the situation and the environment that we're living in at this time. So we support the jobs bill. We want to create jobs in our infrastructure. This country needs to repair its roads and its bridges and its water systems, and we believe that creating those jobs will help all of our communities, not only get jobs but put money back into the economy.
The economy needs stimulating. You stimulate the economy not by cut, cut, cuts, but by investing in the economy, both the private sector and the public sector. So we've got to fight for it. We've got to stand up. We've got to resist any Tea Party efforts that say that they came to Congress to dismantle government and they want to cut, cut, cut. They will not support anything that will raise revenues, or even maintain revenues in some instances. We've got to push back on that. We've got to be strong. We've got to say to our colleagues: the facts are clear; they are in front of you. Nobody can deny these facts, and we're asking you to join with us in making sure that not only we deal with the most vulnerable in our society, but we pay attention to all of those who are suffering and the families that are suffering.
I want to tell you, I have witnessed that some of our friends on the opposite side of the aisle who represent very poor communities don't seem to be able to rise to the occasion to offer them support. It seems to me that they can basically talk about and inflame issues that have nothing to do with the economic well-being of their constituents. And so we have to keep reminding them that this is for everybody. This is for your constituents that you're not really representing, those poor people in rural communities who don't have health care clinics, those poor people who don't have jobs, those poor people who don't have the kind of education that they should have.
So thank you for bringing us to the floor this evening to once again put the focus on jobs, jobs, jobs.
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