Is Congressional Black Caucus Up for the Challenge?
By Tracie Powell
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CQ Politics
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Link to article
February 07, 2009
You may have seen stories lately questioning the usefulness of Black History Month (click here, here and here) and pondering the relevancy of organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus.
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a challenge to the Voting Rights Act and millions of people — disproportionately minority — face losing their homes to foreclosure, the caucus says it can make the case that it is needed more now than ever.
“The Congressional Black Caucus is as relevant today as it was when it was first organized back in 1971,” Rep. Barbara Lee , the new chairwoman of the caucus, said recently.
“What we have to determine now is how to move our people and make them a part of the democratic process as President-elect Obama called for during the campaign.”
Obama’s election, Lee said, “provides us a unique opportunity to enact legislation to fill the moral gaps in our society. We have to be bold in addressing the issues he has raised, from foreclosures and jobs to health care and education . . . . (and) confront the problems of poverty head-on.”
The black caucus has 43 members, including several who hold sway over plum committees in the House: founder John Conyers, D-Mich., chairs the House Judiciary Committee, while Charles B. Rangel , D-N.Y., heads one of the most powerful committees of all, Ways and Means.
Members of the CBC, as it’s known in these parts, also control 15 subcommittee chairmanships and just last month laid claim to perhaps one of its biggest victories to date when one of its own became the president of the United States.
The real question is whether the CBC will translate those leadership positions into policy successes.
Last year, CBC members were able to muster up enough support to push through legislation in the House that called for an official apology for slavery. It got nowhere in the Senate, though, where Obama was often absent because of the campaign and the major backers were two white senators: Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas and Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa.
The CBC didn’t even fare that well in their effort to get their colleagues to do something about the foreclosure crisis that is wreaking havoc on communities they represent. And that was in a Congress run by Democrats — members of their own party.
With friends like these . . .
But this is a new year, with a new president and a new Congress. The CBC could end up with a much different track record.
“The 111th Congress will be a real test for the Black Caucus in terms of whether they can capitalize on their leadership success,” said Kate Carney Huston, a former American Political Science Association fellow whose research focuses on congressional caucuses. “With an African-American president and a friendlier Congress, this is perhaps their best chance.”
Yet even with a black president, the CBC is limited as to how much it can do — and in how much help it can expect from the West Wing.
As a group, the CBC might not have the kind of relationship with President Obama that it needs in order to get much of its agenda accomplished, said Ronald Walters, a deputy campaign manager for Jesse Jackson in 1984 and now director of the African American Leadership Center and a political science professor at the University of Maryland.
“While the majority whip (and former CBC chairman) Jim Clyburn has a relationship with Obama because he is a member of the leadership, I’m not sure that Clyburn, or any other member of the CBC for that matter, actually has Obama’s ear,” Walters said. “Certainly not as much as (Speaker) Nancy Pelosi does.”
The CBC not only lacks a close relationship with Obama, when it mattered during the Democratic primaries, a lot of the group’s members threw their support to his chief rival, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton .
They’ve got to have mixed feelings about the possibility that the black candidate they didn’t back may be able to move in areas where they are powerless.
Only a president, for instance, can restore prominence to the civil rights division at the Justice Department and heal racial wounds that have festered there. This week, Eric Holder moved into his office at the Justice Department — this country’s first African American attorney general.
Obama is also teeing up a White House Office on Urban Policy.
It is intended to address issues such as poverty, employment, education and housing — all priority issues for African-Americans in general and for the black caucus.
There are other issues that the CBC has worked on for years and may have to work on for years more, like health care, sentencing disparities and incarceration rates in black communities. It will be hard to move legislation dealing with any of those serious issues unless they’re also front-burner issues for Obama.
“The caucus can’t put the whole of its agenda on the president’s plate because he can not govern as a black president,” Walters said. “He is not just one person, he runs something called the presidency and that is an institution. That’s something a lot of African American leaders, a lot of people period, just don’t understand.”
When 13 black representatives formed the Congressional Black Caucus 40 years ago, Black History was recognized for a week, not a month. Its core mission was “to promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens.”
With this goal in mind, there is no doubt, especially given current socioeconomic conditions, that there is a need for a relevant CBC.
There is still a lot of work to do.
The question people should be asking is whether CBC members are up to the challenge.
