[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 29, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1420-E1422]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMARKS OF SECRETARY CUOMO

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NANCY PELOSI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 29, 1999

  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 
Andrew Cuomo recently spoke to the National Italian American Foundation 
as part of its Congressional Lunch Series. Andrew Cuomo is a model for 
those who would serve the nation, and while he comes from a 
distinguished family, he has already made his own indelible mark on our 
society.
  His remarks were filled with humor and passion about family and 
culture, discrimination and opportunity, and the economic success so 
many communities are enjoying today. Andrew Cuomo also spoke eloquently 
about helping all Americans share in that success, so that our nation 
can truly be its best. It is with great pleasure that I ask for this 
transcript of Secretary Cuomo's remarks to NIAF to be entered into the 
Congressional Record.

Remarks by HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo to the National Italian American 
                    Foundation (NIAF), June 15, 1999

       It is a pleasure to be with NIAF once again. They are a 
     great organization telling the truth about the Italian-
     Americans. The President just released our new State of the 
     Cities report. I think it frames a few issues, that--as this 
     is a policy forum--would be a good stepping off point.
       The State of the Cities report says basically two things. 
     It says first there is a great apparent success story that is 
     this nation, and one that we should celebrate because it is 
     true: this is the strongest economy in history. It breaks all 
     sorts of records. The

[[Page E1421]]

     President relishes that fact, the Vice President relishes 
     that fact, the Congress relishes that fact and we all should, 
     because it is true.
       But it is not at the same time the only reality. There is 
     another reality for people and places that are left behind in 
     the new economy. Their reality of failure is as stark as the 
     other reality of success, and it is also more painful as a 
     reality.
       So you have a time where you have this great economic 
     success. Eighteen million new jobs, lowest peace time 
     unemployment since I was born 41 years ago, crime down, 
     poverty down, welfare down--that is one story of America.
       But there is also another story. A story of those places 
     that are left behind where three out of five people aren't 
     even in the stock market--so they don't celebrate when you go 
     to 10,000 or 11,000.
       Yes, you have more millionaires than ever before, but you 
     also have the greatest income inequality in over 20 years. 
     You have the highest homeownership rate in history--66.7 
     percent--but you also have 600,000 homeless Americans, at the 
     same time that you have the highest home ownership rate. So 
     you have two very accurate realities, both stark in their own 
     way--both a story of success and a story of failure.
       The paradox, however, is in many ways antithetical to what 
     we believe in as a nation and what is in the long term health 
     of this nation. You cannot survive, you cannot flourish with 
     those disparities, with those polarities. It is especially 
     true in the cities, as the report goes on to point out.
       The numbers are staggering. Most of the cities are doing 
     well and I do not mean cities like New York, Los Angeles, 
     Chicago. I mean cities quite large, if you look at the 900 
     cities in the nation. Most of them are doing very well--about 
     one-third of them are either smaller, poorer, or have higher 
     unemployment.
       The strong cities, the cities that have done well in the 
     transition to the new economy, are doing very, very well. The 
     cities that have been trailing are falling farther and 
     farther behind.
       You can see the story in the numbers, or you can just go 
     down here to Anacostia in Washington, D.C. and drive through 
     Anacostia and you will see the story. Or you can drive 
     through parts of the South Bronx or through parts of Watts in 
     LA and you will see the same story.
       Or go visit a public housing project. Pass by Cabrini-Green 
     in Chicago and the situation is as bad as it has ever been. 
     Talk about the Dow Jones index and they won't know what you 
     are talking about. And if you look at the conditions and you 
     feel the pain in the hallways you see how hollow our success 
     truly is. The statistics tell one story, the lives tell a 
     different story.
       Well, what do we do about it? This is not an overly 
     complicated problem. We don't need to do any fancy studies to 
     determine what to do. We just need to look at what we were 
     taught originally.
       For me, the model was my grandfather Andrea Cuomo--I was 
     named for him, Andrew--Andrea Cuomo, a little man, 5 ft. 6, 
     155 pounds dripping wet with change in his pockets, but he 
     knew what needed to be done. The very concepts that he talked 
     about--and I can hear his voice today, God Bless him--are 
     still the concepts that we have to strive for. He would talk 
     about this land as a land of justice, justice was so 
     important to him. He would talk about this as a land of 
     opportunity. Opportunity for all, opportunity for all, he 
     would keep saying.
       We have to get back to those core principles and make them 
     happen because they are not yet a reality. We need 
     ``opportunity for all'' translated into what we are talking 
     about in this town. You need economic development measures 
     that get jobs back to cities. 84 percent of all new jobs over 
     the past two years were created in suburbs--84 percent. The 
     cities are losing the jobs. As you lose the jobs you will 
     lose the people and you can not sustain it.
       Opportunity for all. Everybody should work, but that means 
     there has to be a job there. It is hollow rhetoric to opine 
     that welfare was no good and we really have made people work.
       One problem: Where are the jobs? Where is the training? 
     Where is the day care? Where is the transportation? If you 
     look at what the economy is doing, it is pulling the jobs 
     from the people and places who need it most. We can correct 
     that, we know we can correct it. We do it very well--we have 
     economic development incentives, we can use the tax code, we 
     can use grants, we can get the jobs back to where we need 
     them. We have to do it.
       We have to fix the education system. Why? Because the 
     education system was the insurer of opportunity for all. The 
     public education system was the great equalizer, it said you 
     can come from anywhere but you go to our public education 
     system and if you work hard you can wind up being Mario Cuomo 
     or Colin Powell or Bill Clinton--all from the public 
     education system.
       We are losing that. When people get up and give speeches 
     and say there is a crisis in education in this nation they 
     forget the second part, there is not a crisis in education in 
     this nation. If you are rich you get the best education on 
     the planet in this country. If you are poor and cannot afford 
     a private school or you are from a poorer school district, 
     then you get a substandard education and you never catch up.
       The education system in this country is moving to two 
     education systems--one for the rich side of town, one for the 
     poor side of town. Go into the richer suburban school 
     districts in the first grade, they'll show you that they put 
     the child on the Internet in the first grade. You go to the 
     same town, the poor school, they don't even have a basketball 
     net. In first grade they will put them at computers with 
     Pentium Processors--but in poor schools the most 
     sophisticated piece of electronic equipment is the metal 
     detector that they walk through on their way to the 
     classroom.
       That is not opportunity for all. We are 19th out of 21 in 
     12th grade math and science. The countries we beat were 
     Cyprus and South Africa. That is not a formula for long-term 
     global economic dominance.
       We need health care because that's opportunity for all. 
     Healthcare: you have 43 million uninsured, 11 million 
     children uninsured. We need housing because that is part of 
     providing the platform for people to do for themselves.
       With a strong economy, a cruel irony: we actually have the 
     greatest need for affordable housing in the nation's history. 
     5.3 million Americans need affordable housing.
       What's happening, interestingly, is that the strong economy 
     is driving up the rents. In San Francisco, the economy is so 
     strong the rents are going so high those people who are on 
     the bottom end or on fixed-incomes can't pay the rent. We 
     know how to solve it--subsidize the rent, which is what you 
     did for so many years, build affordable housing. We just have 
     to want to do it.
       Opportunity for all, provide a safe community. We are doing 
     that with a cops program--lowest crime rate, both property 
     and violence, since 1973. You can do more as soon as we solve 
     this insanity over the gun legislation in this town that's 
     going on now--which I don't understand.
       Some people say ``well you don't understand it because you 
     are a New Yorker, you are from the northeast, you don't 
     understand the value of guns.'' No, no, I am an educated New 
     Yorker, I have gone hunting up in Maurice Hinchey's district, 
     bird hunting, quail hunting. I did pretty well. And I know 
     this--that if you need an assault weapon to hunt, if your aim 
     is that bad, you should just take up another sport.
       And I know that children don't need hand guns to hunt and I 
     know the saying which they love to use in rebuttal: ``gun's 
     don't kill people, people kill people.'' No--people with guns 
     kill people, and if we had intelligent legislation to handle 
     guns we would be doing even more.
       My grandfather would talk about this land of justice, which 
     for him meant that being an Italian American didn't count 
     against you, that the premise of the country was everybody 
     could come--Jews, Italians, Irish, Blacks, Whites it didn't 
     matter. You came and then you did the best you could and 
     under the ``opportunity for all'' agenda they would work with 
     you to make it happen.
       We still have not reached that. We really haven't. One of 
     the things we do at the Department is Fair Housing. I can't 
     tell you how many cases we see, every day, coast to coast, 
     where discrimination is still alive and well--as ugly, as 
     vulgar as it has ever been.
       Last year the case in Jasper, Texas where they took an 
     African American man, they chained him to the back of a 
     pickup truck, and they dragged him until he was decapitated. 
     That's America 1999, not 1969. At the cusp of a new 
     millennium with all this economic power, they're still 
     killing people for the color of their skin.
       We had a case, a Portuguese woman moved into Missouri. 
     First week, they planted a seven-foot cross on her lawn and 
     burned it. Why? Because she was Portuguese--they thought she 
     was African American--and that was their way of saying ``we 
     don't want you here.'' A cemetery in New Jersey. On Rosh 
     Hashana they knocked down all the tombstones in a Jewish 
     cemetery.
       Discrimination is very much alive and well, and for 
     Italians it's alive and well. Mario Cuomo was thinking about 
     running for national office. At one time we did a few polls: 
     Six percent name recognition of Mario Cuomo. Only 6 percent 
     had heard of his name nationally. Nine percent thought he had 
     connections to the Mafia.
       Discrimination is alive and well, and my grandfather would 
     talk about the voice of liberty, the voice of liberty, that 
     this country was the voice of liberty. What we did in Kosovo, 
     thank God, was express and communicate the voice of liberty. 
     What we are doing in China--which we should do more of--what 
     we are doing in South Africa--is to keep that voice of 
     liberty strong.
       Those are the avenues, the agendas, that I think that we 
     have to approach to resolve the dual realities that we are 
     seeing in this nation. Understand the realities, expose 
     them--don't run from them--and then approach them.
       And I also believe this: That now is the time to do these 
     things. We have a great economic success--let's use it to 
     invest. If we are not going to do these things now, then when 
     are we going to do them?
       They say the time to fix the hole in the roof is when the 
     sun is shining. Well, now is when the sun is shining. If we 
     don't take these dividends and invest now in Anacostia, when 
     are we going to do it? If we don't now take up the fight for 
     affordable housing now, when are we going to do it? If we 
     don't take up the fight now for healthcare, when are we going 
     to do it? If not now, when?
       I'll tell you when--never. Because all of the excuses are 
     gone. If this Congress, if this administration doesn't push 
     progressive government it will never happen--because you

[[Page E1422]]

     won't get a better moment than this moment.
       All the things yelled about for all those years--all the 
     obstacles are stripped away. How many years did we hear about 
     the deficit: ``well we can't do it, we have deficit''. The 
     deficit--the great inheritance of the Reagan administration. 
     Well, the deficit is gone. God bless President Clinton, you 
     have a balanced budget, you are talking about a surplus.
       ``Well, the government can't do anything.'' Well, the 
     government's reinvented. Confidence in government is at its 
     highest point in 40 years. If we don't do it now when will we 
     do it? If we don't do it now, we will never do it.
       And that, my friends, is a sin, because we have so much 
     more to do, because the promise that this nation made to my 
     grandfather and your grandfather is not yet fulfilled. They 
     believed--they believed so much so that they came from all 
     over the globe to this country. They got in little boats, 
     they went across great oceans to lands they didn't even 
     know--they didn't know how to speak the language--but the 
     promise was so powerful.
       Opportunity for all, justice, brotherhood, discrimination 
     against none. We'll help you make it, you will lift us all. 
     And we will work with you to make it as a community.
       We are not there yet, but we can be. Now is not the time to 
     be complacent. Now is not the time to pat each other on the 
     back and say ``boy oh boy you see how that Dow Jones is 
     doing.''
       Now is the time to lock arms and go forward even stronger 
     and harder than before and use this moment. We can do better. 
     We are cheating ourselves if we say, this is all we can do. 
     We are cheating ourselves if we are saying this is the best 
     we can be, we've done it, this is America at its best.
       This is not America at its best. This is not America at its 
     best. We can do more.
       Langston Hughes wrote a beautiful poem. I just want to read 
     you a couple of paragraphs from it:
                                  ____

     Let America be America Again.
     Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
     Let it be that great strong land of love
     Where opportunity is real, and life is free,
     Equality is in the air we breathe.
     I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
     I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
     I am the red man driven from the land.
     I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
     I am the worker sold to the machine.
     I am the people, worried, hungry, mean--
     Hungry yet today, despite the dream.
     I am the man who never got ahead.
     A dream--
     Still beckoning to me!
     O, let America be America--
     The land that never has been yet--
     And yet must be.
                                  ____

       That is our charge--together we can do it.

       

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