Congressional Black Caucus

U.S. Politics

  

Obama’s Black Backlash

Aug 19, 2011 9:07 PM EDT

Exasperated with the first African-American president, the Congressional Black Caucus says it’s time to emulate the Tea Party. Patricia Murphy on its vow to adopt get-tough tactics.

     With a stinging budget defeat behind them and unemployment in the black community soaring to 16 percent, members of the Congressional Black Caucus say they’re done waiting for Barack Obama to fight their battles for them. Instead, the 43 African-American lawmakers say they’re taking matters into their own hands and will carry the fight to Tea Party Republicans, whom they blame for Obama’s latest lurch to the right.

      “The Tea Party discovered something. That is if they organize, if they talk loud enough, if they threaten, if they register to vote and elect a few people, they can take over the Congress of the United States,” said Rep. Maxine Waters. “They called our bluff and we blinked. We should have made them walk the plank.”

     Waters was speaking in Atlanta, a stop on the CBC’s five-city job fair and town-hall tour now making its way across the country. On the same day Obama left Washington for a 10-day Martha’s Vineyard vacation, eight caucus members hosted a crowd of nearly 5,000 out-of-work Georgians who had flocked to event for the rare chance to meet recruiters from companies that can actually hire them.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters considers the summer of 2011 "a defining moment" and says the Tea Party "called our bluff and we blinked.", Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo

     The scene outside the event told the story of the black community, whose jobless rate is more than 50 percent above the national average and spikes as high as 39.2 percent for young African-Americans. Dressed in dark suits, knotted ties, and shined leather shoes, men and women stood for up to five hours in a line that stretched four and five people deep as it snaked and switched back across the Atlanta Technical College campus. Some held umbrellas against the Georgia sun, while most fanned themselves with a few fresh resumes. Once inside, they could visit booths set up by prospective employers, smile, shake hands, and hope to make an impression. At least, many said, it was something to do.
     “The people want us to fight. They want us to stand up,” Waters said. “We are going to be insistent that what comes out in September is going to reflect the experiences that we have had.”

At the town-hall meeting that followed the fair, Waters and other CBC members told 200 or so attendees that everyone, from members of Congress to folks in the seats, needed to start doing more or suffer the consequences at the hands of Tea Party–aligned Republicans back in Washington.

     Waters called the summer of 2011 a “defining moment” for her and the African-American community, especially as Capitol Hill’s new supercommittee gears up to slash federal spending further this fall.

“The people want us to fight. They want us to stand up,” Waters said. “We are going to be insistent that what comes out in September is going to reflect the experiences that we have had.”

     Looking back on the summer, several CBC members acknowledged that the freshman class of Tea Party Republicans had out-hustled, out-shouted, and out-organized them as the Aug. 2 default deadline neared. In the end, President Obama chose between allowing the country to go into default and signing onto a deal with deep cuts to domestic spending but no tax increases, despite liberal insistence that more revenues were needed.

     “It was the Tea Party and the radical right, the right of the right, that hijacked the Republican Party,” said Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of the civil-rights movement. “They wanted to destroy this president. They made a decision to make him a one-termer, and that’s what it was all about.”

     Lewis joined two thirds of the black caucus in voting against the budget deal, warning that the trigger mechanism in the bill will gut Medicare and Medicaid if the evenly divided supercommittee deadlocks and automatic spending cuts kick in.

     Rep. Cedric Richmond, one of a handful of freshman Democrats elected in 2010, said he voted for the deal to avoid a national default. “I didn’t want to vote for it, but I didn’t want to take castor oil when I was sick either,” he said.

     In an interview with The Daily Beast, Richmond called the House GOP and Tea Party members in particular “sinful” for holding the American economy over a barrel to get the spending cuts they wanted.

“They won because they are organized, they are monolithic, and they are willing, I think, to obstruct the success of the country to win the next election,” he said. “That is what I find to be sinful, with so many people unemployed.”