Opening Remarks at Surviving the Recession & Accelerating the Recovery Panel

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) delivered the following opening remarks:

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining me for this panel on 'Surviving the Recession and Accelerating the Recovery.'"

The 112th Congress will be defined by the current $1.5 trillion deficit. Democrats, and Republican lawmakers, are concerned about what impact the deficit will have on the economy, on our ability to borrow funds, and on the continued financial viability of our country. However, even more concerning than the threats the deficit poses are certain proposals to address the deficit. While some Members of the other party believe that the best solution is to hack away at all programs, including those that help the most vulnerable; we in the Congressional Black Caucus are very concerned about the impacts of any budget cuts on African-Americans.

We are concerned because the brunt of this economic crisis is being felt by African-Americans. I am especially concerned about the impact of foreclosures on our communities. Over one million homes were repossessed in 2010, and the Federal Reserve predicts another 4.25 million foreclosure filings in the next two years. Unfortunately, a high number of these foreclosures will be experienced by African-Americans. We are now at a point where about one in ten African-American families have either lost their homes, or are in imminent danger of losing them.

As a result of these foreclosures, our communities stand to lose stability, investment, and wealth. All told, the Center for Responsible Lending estimates that the foreclosure crisis will result in African-American communities losing about $193 billion in wealth through 2012.  We know that the foreclosure crisis is driven by dual challenges:  predatory products and a deep jobs crisis.  Unfortunately, African-Americans are more highly impacted on both of these fronts, as they were more likely to receive high-cost, subprime mortgages, and are about 85 percent more likely to be unemployed.

So this is a bleak picture.  A picture that makes it clear that before we can consider slashing away at the budget, we must be willing to help preserve the African-American middle class.

But we have to recognize a few public policy victories over the last Congress that provide some bright spots in this otherwise distressing situation.  I am proud to say that because of the concerted, strategic and organized work of myself and my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, we will soon have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  The CFPB will have the power to stop predatory financial products before they spread like a virus through African-American communities.  Payday lenders will be regulated.  Mortgage disclosures will become simpler.  Credit card companies won't be able to arbitrarily raise interest rates.

And importantly, each regulator of the financial services industry will be required to establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, to advise the agency administrator on the impacts of agency policies and programs on minority- and women-owned businesses. Furthermore, the law also calls on each director of these offices to develop standards to increase the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses in the programs and contracts of the agency.

With this provision, we sought to end an insular culture in the financial services industry that perpetuates the exclusion of qualified women and minorities, and the businesses they own.  And never again do we want to see the practices used during the last financial crisis – where the same large firms that contributed to the crisis were selected to manage millions of dollars in contracts to rescue us from the crisis – simply because they had exclusive access to these agencies. 

I would like to thank Mrs. Donna Sims Wilson, on our panel today, and other partners sharing our goal of inclusion, for working with us to achieve this important victory.

In addition to taking action on foreclosures, we must also protect our achievements in the 112th Congress.  Like health care reform, we have already heard some talk of trying to repeal, defund or otherwise undermine the CFPB.  And some on the other side of the aisle, and in the media, have taken to attacking these new Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion.

We are already starting to see a Republican onslaught against programs that provide a basic social safety net for our most vulnerable neighbors.  House Republicans want to end the HOPE VI program for the revitalization of public housing.  They want to end all legal services aid to help families avoid foreclosures.  They want to privatize Social Security and provide vouchers for Medicare. And they want deep cuts to critical housing programs like Section 8 and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), which literally can mean the difference between families, children and the elderly becoming homeless.

All of these cuts would fall disproportionately on poor African-Americans, who are already struggling with poverty. One in four African-Americans currently lives below the poverty line, including working families who can never make enough to make ends meet. They don't have health care; they don't have pensions. Without the safety net provided by these programs, I fear that life will get much harder for working poor African-Americans. And as a result, our communities will continue to lose out on opportunities to build wealth.

Regrettably, none of this talk of fiscal austerity applies to tax cuts for the wealthy, as we see from the recently-passed $25 billion cut to estate taxes and $80 billon cut in the income taxes of the richest 2 percent of Americans.  And certainly none of this talk applies to the $2 billion per week we spend in Afghanistan, or the countless billions we've poured into Iraq.

Instead, they say that a tiny sliver of the federal budget – the 15 percent of the budget used for non-defense, discretionary spending – must bear the burden of reducing a deficit created by endless wars and tax cuts.

I believe that other solutions exist.  That's why I am pleased to have our panelists here today, not only to expand upon the current economic situation, but to provide some solutions to how we grow and empower African-Americans, their businesses, and their neighborhoods.  I would now like to recognize our first panelist, Dr. Algernon Austin, to share his perspectives on these issues."

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