[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            FIGHTING POVERTY

  (Mr. JEFFERSON asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. JEFFERSON. Madam Speaker, I rise to thank Representative Barbara 
Lee for passing her resolution yesterday committing our Nation to fight 
poverty.
  Nowhere is this commitment and action needed more than in the City of 
New Orleans. Ironically, on the day that the levees broke in New 
Orleans, 2\1/2\ years ago, the Census Bureau was releasing its report 
on poverty, showing that Orleans Parish had a poverty rate of 23.2 
percent, seventh highest in the 290 large counties in America. Thirty-
five percent of the city's African American population is classified as 
poor. Seventy-seven percent of the students in New Orleans participate 
in free or reduced-cost lunch programs. Pre-Katrina African Americans 
made up 67 percent of New Orleans, but 84 percent of its population is 
below the poverty line. And it is mostly in its 47 neighborhoods of 
extreme poverty where our citizens are still out of town, unable to 
return and share in the rebuilding of New Orleans.
  So the commitment of our Nation must not be just to recover the City 
of New Orleans, but also to focus on the peculiar needs of its 
impoverished citizens, needs existing before Katrina made much more 
desperate since.

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