WASHINGTON – There was the quartet of young men in suits who had graduated from Georgia Southern more than a year ago and had yet to find work. There was the jobless doctoral student who had recently relocated from Richmond, Va.
And there were thousands more, of all ages and education levels, thrusting their resumes in the face of U.S. Rep. John Lewis as he walked the line outside last month’s Congressional Black Caucus jobs fair at Atlanta Technical College.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the Atlanta Democrat said this week.
Tonight President Barack Obama will unveil his latest proposals to tackle the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment before a joint session of Congress. Fresh off a series of five jobs fair events across the country, Georgia’s members of the Congressional Black Caucus are urging Obama to be aggressive in trying to put people back to work.
"He must be bold on Thursday night," Lewis said. "And he must follow it up and be bold on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the following weeks and months to come. He’s got to get up and push and pull. He’s got to do what I call make some noise."
The relationship between Obama and the black caucus, of which he was a member during his Senate days, has been tense at times, with members pushing the nation's first African-American president to pay more attention to the plight of African-Americans. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded black unemployment at 16.7 percent in August, well above the national 9.1 percent rate.
Members of the black caucus feel that the president shares their ideals and goals has not fought hard enough for them. For example, CBC chairman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., referred to the deal Obama struck with House Speaker John Boehner to raise the nation's borrowing limit as a "sugar-coated Satan sandwich."
Atlanta-area CBC members have not been among the caucus’ squeaky wheels, though they say they feel their colleagues’ frustration.
"The constituency that African-American Congressmen represent is getting just bammed and jammed with all of this far more than the general population, so it’s hitting us hard, and we have to bring attention to that," said Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last month rejected the suggestion that the president is not specifically targeting black joblessness for fear of alienating white voters. The president is "doing everything he can to spur growth and job creation, and to assist those communities that have been hardest hit," Carney told reporters. "So this is not a political issue."
Administration officials also stressed to the AJC their extensive outreach to the caucus, which has included a pair of meetings with Obama this year, an audience with White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, frequent contact with senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, and attendance by cabinet-level officials at CBC jobs fairs.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia, said most members of the CBC are pragmatic; they want nothing more than practical, politically feasible jobs proposals.
"I think that the times dictate modesty in the proposals that the president makes, not just feel-good initiatives that have no chance of passage," he said.
Johnson backed several items that are expected to be included in tonight's speech, such as school construction funding, an infrastructure bank to leverage public and private investment in roads and bridges, a payroll tax cut and extending funding for surface transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration. Scott proposed reducing the corporate tax rate in exchange for guarantees that multinational corporations bring jobs back to the U.S. that they have moved overseas.
The bipartisanship necessary to enact such proposals has been in short supply in the nation's capital, but Lewis drew on his experience in the civil rights movement to illustrate how skilled politicians overcome opposition.
He recalled that after signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson told civil rights leaders there was not enough support in Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Lewis, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helped drum up support across the country for the bill, which made it through Congress in August 1965.
After laying out his plans, Obama must hit the road, Lewis said, and get the public on his side.
"[LBJ] said, ‘Make me do it,'" Lewis said. "So you have to create the climate and the environment to get Congress to act, and only the American people may be able to do just that."
About the Author
