You have got to love the following headline: “Black Caucus demands immediate action on jobs.” This is typical of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), which is a group of people who make a lot of demands but don’t seem to actually do anything useful themselves. Well, if you aren’t actually going to do something, then the next best thing is to go on a tour of various cities in America, at taxpayer expense, to whine about what others aren’t doing. Nice work, if you can get it. But then again, no member of the CBC really had to work to get their cushy positions in Congress because they’re not even from competitive districts. Ever wonder where the “bench” is behind Obama? Don’t look here. But I digress. At issue is the fact that 16.2 percent of black Americans looking for jobs can’t find them, as compared to 9.2 percent of the population at large. It seems CBC head Emanuel Cleaver and his merry band of 43 Robin Hood types were not successful at proposing legislation to solve the problem, so they’re taking their message to the streets to call for more federal funds in areas where there is “persistent poverty and unemployment.”
So the plan is to visit several cities this summer as part of the CBC’s For the People Job Initiative, which will include a job fair and corresponding town hall meeting in each city. This actually isn’t too bad of an idea, as they will be inviting companies that are hiring to come to the job fairs, and will provide workshops on resume building, drafting of cover letters, and coaching on better communication skills to become more marketable. So some of what they are doing is quite laudable, at least in the short term. The problem is that at core they continue to believe the solution to the problem of jobs in the African-American community is legislation coming out of Congress, which includes the continued push for “green jobs” and the building of an infrastructure that purportedly supports such jobs. And this is why I humbly say they continue to make the same mistakes as the rest of their Democratic brethren in Congress. They just can’t seem to accept the fact that it is the private market that creates jobs, not the government, and that the problems in the black community are not problems that can be solved by government.
In an interview with The Root, Cleaver noted that the types of legislation his caucus proposed was job training, government-supported jobs programs, and funding of projects similar to those of FDR. Yes, it is the government’s job to build roads and bridges, but these are not jobs that will provide a significant lift to the black population in the long term. Moreover, the government has already pumped trillions of dollars of stimulus into the economy to little or no effect, and now we are in a debt crisis, so projects similar to FDR simply aren’t realistic (and wouldn’t be otherwise). Thus, I think Cleaver and his band should focus on what actually will make a difference in the black community, but I don’t think it’s even on their radar. The first thing they need to do as black leaders is to begin telling black people the truth, for once. Government cannot solve our problems. Only we can. This means reversing the trend of out of wedlock births, accepting responsibility for our neighborhoods and schools, and accepting personal responsibility for our families. There simply is no substitute for doing the right thing as a people by changing our dire statistics one person, one family, and one community at a time.
The second thing Cleaver and company needs to recognize is that their caucus needs to become business friendly, even if the remainder of the Democratic caucus continues to be recalcitrant. A key factor to solving the problem of unemployment is the creation of more jobs. When the economy is doing well, more blacks will have jobs, thus reducing the unemployment rate, and more income will be generated for the federal government to use for programs that actually help truly needy people to gain more marketable skills. The problem is that Democrats seemingly always opt to use additional revenues to make people more dependent on government instead of helping them to become more independent. What Cleaver and his fellow Democrats should be doing is creating an economic environment that encourages business investment in black communities, and working with local government and schools to make sure they have a well-trained workforce that can take advantage of such opportunities. Doing this instead of seeking to place onerous regulations, mandates and green policies on businesses, as Democrats are wont, could go a long way in improving the conditions of black America.
In general, the policies promoted by the CBC are not policies that empower or uplift the black community. They are policies that are largely unconstitutional to begin with, usurping what is actually the purview of the states. That’s not to say the CBC cannot have any influence on the states, but that influence needs to be empowering, instead of one whose effect is to permanently enslave people to the federal government through dependency on entitlements. The CBC needs to move away from its big government disposition and adopt one of economic empowerment that includes free markets, limited government, and personal responsibility if it is to have a lasting, positive impact on black America. I won’t be holding my breath for this to happen anytime soon.
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