17 Oct 2011 Black Activists Object to Extremist Rhetoric From Obama and Supporters in Defense of Expensive Jobs Bill

Washington, D.C. – Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are condemning the divisive, radical rhetoric used by President Obama and his supporters in promotion of the President’s $477 billion “American Jobs Act.”

“The President’s remarks are disgraceful and dangerous. At a time when so many Americans are mired in the failing agenda of the Obama Administration, it is shameful to see the President peddling the divisiveness of race and class warfare,” said Project 21 spokesman Jerome Hudson. “The President should be preaching a message of inspiration and American exceptionalism — not victimhood and racial antipathy.”

Playing the race card against critics of his bill on October 13, Obama told an audience at a Latino-focused White House forum that “I believe America should be… a place where every child, no matter what they look like, where they come from, should have a chance to succeed.” He followed his assertion with the cutting remark “none of this matters to Republicans in the Senate.”

Republican senators released their own jobs bill on October 13. On October 11, a procedural vote on Obama’s bill failed to get the necessary 60 votes to move forward. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) refused to allow an immediate final vote on the bill that was promoted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — a vote that needed only a simple majority to pass — because at least four Democrat senators are considered to be opposed to the President’s bill.

Vice President Joe Biden added to the divisiveness during an event in Flint, Michigan on October 12 when he implied that an inability to send more federal dollars to the city government to pay for police officers would lead to an increase in rapes and murders in the city. And Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA), on the same day, during a radio interview with Ed Schultz, questioned the patriotism of critics of the Obama jobs bill: “They don’t love this country because they are harming it — because they have this petty little spitting match with the President.” After Schultz confirmed that Sanchez was actually meant what she said, he replied approvingly, “That’s the kind of talk we gotta have.”

“The behavior by Obama and his supporters is a slap in the face of the independents and conservatives such as Colin Powell who bought into Obama’s purported message of hope and change in 2008 with no regard to what he looked like,” said Project 21 spokesman Stacy Swimp. “Until there is a revolution of values in which citizens take personal responsibility for the conditions of their communities, things won’t change no matter what the government does.”

With regard to Vice President Biden’s comments about crime in Flint, Michigan, Swimp added: “I live in Michigan, and I am very familiar with the state of affairs in Flint. What’s killing jobs and ruining the quality of life there is that union demands have caused the jobs to dry up and continue to be a root cause of the suffering there. Until problems such as prevailing and minimum wage mandates are reformed and Davis-Bacon Act union preferences are repealed, things won’t turn around anytime soon.”

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (https://nationalcenter.org).