[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20242]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ERADICATE POVERTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to thank my colleagues in the 
Congressional Black Caucus who are taking the time and consistently 
putting forward this message that poverty and race and the convergence 
of them in this country must be an issue that we deal with.
  I found it extremely ironic as Chair of the Congressional Black 
Caucus that it has taken a disaster like Katrina to refocus attention 
on the issue of poverty in this country. In fact, it has been 
interesting to see how this has evolved, because the Congressional 
Black Caucus has been dealing with this issue of poverty and the 
disparity in economic means between African Americans and other 
Americans in this country this entire year.
  We developed an agenda in January of this year which was printed, 
released, covered and written about in the press. Press people were 
calling me, saying you have positioned this in a different way than it 
has been positioned in the past. And then all of a sudden what I found 
was quietly into the night the discussion about poverty and the 
convergence of poverty and race and class went quietly into the 
background.
  What has been interesting since Katrina occurred is that the same 
press people who wrote about our positioning of this issue have been on 
the phone to me, saying why have you all not been talking about this? 
Why have you not kept this issue of race and class and poverty in front 
of us? We should have been talking about this.
  And I have to remind them that, yes, look, you wrote about this in 
January and February of this year, and you must have forgotten about 
it. We have not forgotten about it. We have been talking about it all 
year.
  It did not take a hurricane to make us patently aware that poverty 
exists in this country. In fact, what I would submit to you is if the 
same kind of catastrophe occurred in any city in America and the same 
amount of advance notice was given to the people of that city, the 
people who would get out would be the high-income people. They would 
heed the notice. They would have the resources to move away from the 
disaster that is coming down the pike. And the people who would not be 
able to heed the notice and the entreaties to get out of harm's way 
would be poor people; and in every city in America, every place in 
America they would be disproportionately African American, Hispanic and 
other minorities.
  That is not only true of a hurricane. When you are poor, you cannot 
get away from bad health conditions, because you cannot take the 
preventative steps that you need to take to get treatment. When you are 
poor, you do not have the option of sending your kids to private school 
to get them away from bad schools. You do not have the option of doing 
a lot of things that we take for granted in this country.
  So maybe my staff member is right. We do not like to talk about that 
in this country. We do not like to talk about poverty in this country 
because we have this notion that we all are equal. We are not equal 
except in writing.
  Under our Constitution, we are created equal. We are supposed to be 
given equal opportunity, but when somebody starts at the 70 yard line 
in a race of 100 yards and somebody else is starting at the zero yard 
line, making up that difference is an impossible task, and we have got 
to recommit ourselves to making up that difference. It cannot be done 
just by people running faster and harder and longer. We have got to 
commit ourselves as a Nation to fighting poverty and its convergence 
with race.

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