The Congressional Black Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. JEFFRIES. I thank my good friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois, Robin Kelly, for yielding, for her very generous introduction, and certainly to my good friend and classmate, Donald Payne, for co-anchoring this Special Order. And as well, I want to acknowledge the presence of distinguished Congresswoman Barbara Lee from California for her continued eloquence and contribution on such a significant issue.

I really count it an honor and a privilege to once again have the opportunity to come to the House floor to participate in this Special Order hour, this CBC hour of power, co-anchored by the dynamic duo of D. Payne and R. Kelly. We really appreciate their continued involvement, eloquence, and leadership in helping to articulate for the American people, as part of this conversation that we are able to have periodically, the issues of great importance to the African American community, but issues that I believe are also of great importance to the broader American community.

Poverty is an issue that certainly impacts the city of Newark that Congressman Payne represents, the city of Oakland that Barbara Lee represents, the city of Chicago that Congresswoman Kelly represents, and part of the city of New York that I represent in part. Even though the ZIP Codes for those four particular municipalities may be different, the issues of lack of economic community opportunity, of course, are largely the same. Far too many people do not robustly have an opportunity to pursue the American Dream in a manner that is consistent with what America is supposed to be, a place where, if you just work hard and stay on the right path, you have an opportunity to lift yourself up out of the station that you may have been born into in life. But we know, unfortunately, that race seems to play a role in that capacity to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

In fact, while one in three Whites who find themselves in poverty have the ability, it appears, to elevate themselves out of it--and those numbers may even be a little higher--only one in five African Americans appear to have the capacity to lift themselves out of an impoverished condition that they find themselves in.

Why that is the case is something that I think we need to be able to explore, because regardless of race, it should be a matter of fact here in America that everyone has got a chance to be able to provide for their families to live a middle class lifestyle.

Now, the interesting thing that I found upon my arrival here at the Congress is that issues related to poverty really shouldn't be a Black issue or a White issue, a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. It shouldn't be an urban issue or a rural issue. It is an American issue. In fact, when you look at what has often been defined as persistently poor counties, counties where 20 percent of the population have been below the Federal poverty line for 30 or more years, more of those persistently poor counties are actually represented in this wonderful body by Republicans than by Democrats. So for the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out why we have not been able to come together and find common ground to deal with the problem of poverty in America, because this is not some narrow constituent issue that those of us in the Congressional Black Caucus happen to have and our friends on the other side of the aisle aren't experiencing in terms of the people that they represent. This is actually an issue that needs to be addressed by everybody.

So I am hopeful that as we stand on this House floor, as we extend our hands out in partnership to the other side of the aisle, that we can begin to deal with some of these issues, like, for instance, giving America a raise. For the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out why we would essentially endorse a policy, a minimum wage standard that means you can work full-time, 52 weeks a year, 40 hours a week, and still, when raising a family of three or four, live below the Federal poverty line. Why aren't we making work pay in America?

Now, we are seeing that places like Los Angeles that recently raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour are leading the way at the local level, and I guess that makes sense. Brandeis once said that State government, local governments, are laboratories of democracy, and here I found that the House is probably more like the lion's den of democracy. But it seems to me that we should be able to figure out a pathway toward dealing with some commonsense solutions to dealing with the economic problems that face everyday Americans, like investing in research and development, investing in education and job training, investing in technology and innovation, investing in transportation and infrastructure, and investing in the American worker in a way that makes sense because the deck has been stacked against him, the African American worker or the individual within the African American community that is desperately trying to seek work.

We are suffering from double-digit unemployment in this recovery. When other communities seem to have been able to get back on track and our unemployment numbers are still higher than the collective number during the Great Recession, that is a scandal. We should all have a problem with that.

But the deck generally is stacked against the American worker. Since the early 1970s, the productivity of the American worker has increased in excess of 275 percent. American workers have been more productive over the last 40-plus years, yet during that same time period, wages have increased less than 10 percent. They have remained stagnant. The deck is stacked.

The increase in productivity of the American worker has gone to the privileged few, and we have seen that that has continued during this recovery where corporate profits are way up, the stockmarket is way up, and CEO compensation is way up, but people in the African American community and others are still struggling to be able to recover from the devastating impact that the collapse of the economy had on our community and on many communities throughout America.

So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank my good friends for raising the issue, for once again standing before the American people to address this great issue of significance.

We were all in recess over the last few days back at home, spread across the country, but now we have come back. We are here for 4 conservative weeks to do the people's business, and I am hopeful we can figure out a way to deal with a laser-like focus the problems confronting the persistently poor and those who are in the middle class or trying to become part of the great American middle class.

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