Telling them how to go how to go militate in favor of in favor of the Foreign Policy of the administration. Glenn grothman ok, thank you. Jason chaffetz thank the gentleman. I thank you all for your attendance here, your participation, your expertise, in illuminating what is a very disturbing situation. The committee stands adjourned. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] congratulations on the class of 2016. Today is your day of celebration, and you earned it. Peace voices crying for and light, because your choices will make all the difference to you, and to all of us. Dont be afraid to take on cases or you jobs, or a new issue that really stretches your boundaries. Respect your summer abroad and residencies, internships, living in your parents basement will not be your greatest concern. Commencement sieges in their entirety from colleges and universities around the country by business leaders, politicians, and white house officials on cspan. Biden Vice President speaks to the National Urban league at the annual conference in washington. The Vice President focused on economic inequality and Educational Opportunities for low income children. He was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement award from the urban league president. [applause] good morning, urban leaguers. Good morning. Good morning, urban leaguers. Good morning. As we prepare to greet the Vice President , let me thank all of you for three tremendous days here in our Nations Capital engaging, walking, speaking, talking, and pushing the very important agenda for the people. Give yourselves a warm round of applause. [applause] and while there are many, many important people here in the audience, i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the presence, first, once again of the congresswoman from the great state of ohio and the city of columbus, joyce beatty. [applause] along with former secretary of labor and now senior vice chair of the National Urban league board of trustees, the honorable alexis herman. [applause] in 2009, when we met in chicago, and we asked the Vice President to come, the Vice President came. In 2014 when we met in cincinnati, and we asked the Vice President to join us, the Vice President came and joined us. I am proud this morning once again to welcome to the National Urban league the honorable joe biden. Now, as i prepare the main street Marshall Plan i shared with you during the release of the 2016 state of black america on tuesday, i reflected on the following words of Vice President bidens memoir, promises to keep. In that memoir he, wrote, in the days to come, we will be tested on whether we have the moral courage, the realism, the idealism, the tenacity and the ability to sacrifice some of the current comfort to invest in the future. Joe biden is a friend to the urban League Movement through every step of his career. In helping us get the affiliate under way in wilmington, delaware over a decade ago. Hes exemplified moral courage, idealism, and tenacity as a champion for civil rights, workers rights, and the rights of communities of color. With great gratitude for his unwavering dedication and the greatest respect, i am proud to present Vice President biden with a 2016 Lifetime Achievement award for his leadership and service. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the National Urban league, the urban League Movement, the people we represent all across the nation, i am proud to present to you the Vice President of the United States, joe biden. [applause] [cheers] joe biden hello everybody. ,great to see you all. Please, sit down. Please, sit down. [cheers] as they say in parts of my state, my city, my name is joe biden and yall are the one that brung me to the dance. [laughter] you think im kidding, im not kidding. You know, he is president tomorrow, but to me he is still a mayor. Mayors get things done. Thats how we got to know one another years ago. Mr. Mayor, i base the significance of the award i received the few that i do, on , the consequence of the organization presenting the award. I mean it sincerely. And you do the same thing, all of you. The consequence and people behind the award. And this means a lot to me. This means a lot to me. This, for me, is consequential. Joyce, i was in your hometown yesterday, eating jennys ice cream. And joyce, joyce represents a district which includes a town that must table dont realize is one of the biggest towns in the city, cities in the state, and we were doing something that joyce fought a long time for. I want folks to know. Is that we are changing administratively the rule on what constitutes overtime. Its going to give a pay raise to well over 4. 5 Million People who deserve it. People who are mislabeled management, who are working 70 hours a week and getting paid for 40. Well, we changed that yesterday. And we did it in your hometown. [applause] i heard mark, when i was standing back stage, say, when you invited me, i came. Yall cant get rid of me. [laughter] ive been chasing you my whole career. And i meant what i said, although we did not have an urban league in wilmington for the longest time. I got my start with the naacp. And i literally mean got my start. When i was a kid, i was no great shakes, but i was involved in the civil rights movement, sitting in black churches on sundays, getting ready to go out and march, and it was interesting. There was a guy named jim gillian, who was a great, great, great civil rights leader in my town. He moved into delaware right around the time i was Getting Started as a young lawyer. I got out of law school and had a good job with what they call a white shoe law firm, and one day after six months and a federal court case. They were honorable men and women. We won this court case, representing a corporation and i realized, this aint for me. I walked cattycorner across across what we call rodney , square, to the basement of the building that housed the public askeders office, and i for a job as a public defender. Flames had been , in flames. I graduated in 1968, i came home, like all of you, my two heroes, i dont have a lot of heroes. Theres a lot of people i admire but two heroes i had were dr. , king and bobby kennedy. And dr. King got assassinated that spring, and my town was one of the towns that literally went up in flames. We were the only town since reconstruction occupied by the National Guard for nine months, drawn bayonets, people standing on the corners. And i realized i was in the wrong line of work. Im not suggesting the other line of work there was anything not honorable about it. But it didnt move me. At all. And so, along came this guy named jim gillian. He was an incredible, incredible guy. And i had a guy named tony allen working for me. Tony worked for me, as i said earlier he said he wanted to get , a phd. I said go ahead and get one, youre working for me. Then the son of a gun left me. He got a ph. D. And figured, im way ahead of biden. Ive got to move on. But all kidding aside, jim gillian tapped tony, and he started the effort. And so, you have been youve been incredible. For the past 100 years, the urban league has led the fight for racial justice, and with an emphasis all the time on economic opportunity. Not just basic fairness but economic opportunity. I was saying to some of my younger staff members, talking about as i prepared for this last night, flying back from your hometown, i said, you know, the naacp and many others and all of you, those of us who played little parts like me, you know, got rosa from the back of the bus to the front of the bus, but you guys have been working like the devil to make sure rosas son and grandson can own the bus company. [applause] it is real. It matters. It matters. And you all recognize that institutions, recognize the overwhelming accomplishments of the legacy of institutional racism which we still live with. No one wants to say that. I know i sometimes speak out too loudly sometimes, but i make no apologies for it. Not a joke. I make no apologies for it. Sometimes its uncomfortable, but these are uncomfortable times. Youve got to shake the status quo a little bit. You know, we see this institutional racism exists today in voting. In childrens education. In the very makeup of our neighborhoods. Housing patterns, employment, transportation, access to transportation. You know, for more than 100 years, members of this storied organization have awakened the American People to the realities in our midst, because you share the view that if we let the rest of the country know what the problem is honestly, theyll react to it. Folks arent bad folks, most folks. They just dont know whats going on. Theyre working like the devil just to put three squares on the table a day. Theyre working like hell to make sure they take care of their own families. So they dont theyre not , familiar in a real sense until you bring it to them. You bring it to them. And so, we found out that what happened is, the urban League Executive Director back when i was a kid, he was one of the guys we all looked to, whitney young, he proposed a dramatic Marshall Plan. Not unlike what the mayor is talking about, but it was consequential at the time. And it became the foundation, the foundation for lynn condition johnsons war on poverty. I never knew lyndon johnson. The year i got elected was the year he died. I attended his funeral as a 30yearold kid who just got elected to the United States senate. For all the downsides about the war, this guy did more than anyone else did for civil rights. So that war on poverty was about medicaid, an institution. But he knew that if an africanamerican child or a working family didnt have access to health care, to be healthy, everything got lost. Everything got lost. Medicaid. Medicaid was the single biggest beneficiary immediately with the africanamerican community. There had been no health care. Coming into those communities. Housing. The fact of the matter is, because he knew that africanamericans couldnt achieve economic success, unless they lived in safe places. A playground you could send your kid to and not worry theyre going to come home beat up. Send them to a Public School that you know if they did well they had a chance. Just a chance. A chance. Two maybe, maybe maybe go to , college. Maybe. Only 7 did those days. Were still not that far along but its 20 today. ,but it was only 7 . Headstart. Because he knew, they knew, long before anybody wanted to admit it, that it really mattered. It really mattered, those early years. We now know it matters from the time you bring the baby home from the hospital. We know it matters. We know theres so much we could do. But it mattered. Headstart was all about saying, the fact of the matter is youre behind the curb, going to school. Weve got to give you a head start. The headstart wasnt to get ahead, it was to maybe, maybe catch up. Maybe catch up. We had all those guys talking about bell curves back in those days, remember . About how black children did not have the same cognitive capability of white children, give me a break. No, no, no really. Thank god a lot of young people in the room maybe wont remember that. But that was standard operating procedure. Thats what headstart in part was about. Pell grants. Ive been, as some of you know, ive been an incredibly strong supporter of hbcus. They used to be hbcs. Now its hbcus. [applause] i think ive been on more hbcu campuses as Vice President than anybody who has ever had that job, because it has been become, it has become it was, it was , the it was sort of the sort of a big sign back there that said hope. You know. Hope. Hope. And pell grants. What are pell grants about . It wasnt just africanamericans, but you had to be poor. You had to have a low income. And we would give you assistance to get to college. That you couldnt get before. Well, guess what . The majority of black folks were poor. So it mattered. It mattered. And job corps. President knew he couldnt see economic success without a stable, decent paying job. The whole point was, it didnt solve the problems. But its the first time in my view in our history a president faced squarely the economic realities of what was 250 years of institutional racism. Some of it not even intended but just built into the system, baked into the cake. Baked into the cake. And it mattered. Mr. Mayor, everything you guys have done and worked on has been worked off of. Those basic fundamental principles that underlie every one of the great societys programs. Its always talk about the money and whether its wasted or not. It was the principle behind each of these things. The Democratic Party just finally established, put a stamp on it. So nobody argues today that malnutrition doesnt affect developmental, mental developmental capability. , back then, it was viewed as separate. No one argues today. We argue about whether were going to do anything about it. But im serious. Think about it. And so, the irony here is that when the president and i took office, you all know, the , the economy was in free fall. Im not going to recount how bad it was. You know how bad it was, because it was particularly bad for poor folk, and particularly bad for africanamerican and hispanic poor folk. They were hit the hardest. You know the old last in, first out . If they were in, they were out. Before i lowered my right hand from being sworn in on january 20, wed already lost 776 i think thats the number 776,000 jobs that month alone. We lost over 800,000 before the month ended. And for the next four months, we so the president and i, and we did with expert help, we set in that building in chicago during the period between being elected and being sworn in. Putting together the cabinet and the details of what we were going to do. We came up with a thing called the recovery act. It turned out to be almost 1 trillion, thanks the health of the congresswomen here in the senators. We barely passed it. The school of chicago law and economics did a survey. 84 of all economists say that it helped prevent a depression or at least raise us out of a significant depression. But we wanted to do more than that. You tell me if i am taking too much time. Really thes reason why we are doing what we are doing. I come from the wealthy state of delaware. I dont have anything against rich folks. As poor as patriotic folks, but they dont need me. Rich folks dont need me to look out for their interests. Thats not why iran. Thats not why i got involved. Protect their security but we been doing ok without joe biden. Hollering for the people we are with, they will not do ok. So here is the point. The thing we missed about the recovery act we didnt advertise it. We used that almost trillion dollars spent in a two months. Works every outside group you may remember when the president said that sheriff joe will now enforce it. Sheriff joe is proud. Than 0. 2 waste or fraud. The most significantly administered and Biggest Program in american history. But here is the point. Built inside that was a way to begin to change the way that we cover it. All the money for stimulus but take a look. Billion in 18 months spent on education. Investment inngle one fell swoop. Thank god that we had a guy like arne duncan who knew what he was doing. 15 billion went into your skin into your cities. Look at the innercity neighborhoods. What would happen . Behindids are already and they least 25 of their teachers. Classroomouble up size increases by 50 and they learn less and are further behind. Keepillion just to teachers on the job. We focused on improving the lowest performing schools to theyre the only ones available for africanamerican children. 15 billion for housing because africanamericans invest a disproportionate share of their wealth in homes. Joke of a what is it have to do with African Americans . Any of you from the age of 45 way, age of 107 by the one of my favorite athletes is such a page and let me tell you why. Majorst get to the until he was 45. He pitched a win at 47. Sports writers came in and said no one has ever pitched a win at that age, how do you feel . He said, thats not how i look at age. How old would you be if you didnt know how old you are . I am 42. Heres the point. We talked about in a lot of he studied about urban sprawl. Hollowing out cities. Millennials are moving back to cities faster than any time in modern history. Here is what we have now, we have job sprawl. The jobs are in the counties. Our folks are in the cities. Disproportionate share of folks living in the cities who do not own an automobile. 26 of families do not own an automobile. You cannot have a job if you cant get to the interview. We put a lot of money into transportation. Meaning anything from streetcars to buses to rail transit. Connecting inner cities to the suburbs. Person instle county delaware. It was the fastestgrowing county in america. Remember that Program Program used to beyond the one with alan font what was it called . Candid camera. A point about my state of delaware there was a fourlane access highway going from downtown wilmington into chester, pennsylvania. Allen had a giant sign in the median strip saying, delaware closed today, overcrowded. People stopped and turned around. Guess what, we are going fast. I put i put together this whole big deal about bus transit and a couldnt get the votes for it. Some if it can meeting said we dont want them coming out here. Not a joke. Enoughf you who are old remember. The cut the payroll tax by 120 billion. Payroll tax. Working and got a pay cut if they had a job. Where they werent paying Unemployment Benefits they were extending them. It didnt just help africanamericans, it was everybody in need. Disproportionately, you were all hit the hardest. Is a miniy to do version of what you are trying to do right now. Tackle what we believe would be the most important element of growth, health care. Bringing Health Insurance to 20 of africanamericans who had no Health Insurance. We increased medicaid. At all of the africanamerican and poor families who have been helped by the. Helped by that. 8 million more kids are in college with pell grants. A disproportionately high number of africanamericans. We expanded the earned income tax credit. 1. 5 million black children out in poverty just by that one thing. The dodd frank everybody thinks that. Thanks going on making sure it cannot be told the big to fail but we are also setting up the Consumer FinanceProtection Agency to go after payday loans. I dont see a Payday Loan Office in my neighborhood. I think the old neighborhoods that i work. Theres a payday loan in every fifth corner. Did one other thing. Of i give myings for this he was the attorney general. A lot can come from the community. Sorry, and iim said keep going. Dollars of millions of of refunds. Tens of billions of dollars. He focused on the fact that a lot of mortgages given to africanamericans during this. Fraudulent. Ly with hbcus. I recently spoke with the commencement delaware state for the first time. We all know that hbcs are vital to helping young African Americans reach the middle class and we know all the studies. You know all the studies about times when the disadvantage of orng put into a academically a circumstance where you are an overwhelming minority and how the social pressure impacts on academic achievement. Thats what a lot of very successful and consequential black american middle class and is hbc firstamily before they send a harvard and yell and of the graduate schools. My point is that it is important and thats why the president and this is a i strong support him but it wont surprise you at all that in 2010 we committed almost 1 billion every 10 years to support hbc you mr. That are struggling. Community College Career training fund. Have a people we put together and those who represent major cities. How many jobs were connected to Community College in getting people retrained. So were now pushing for two years of free Community College. Afford fourould years of college. One of the things that bothers is democrats,am , congressmen, senators and the rest of us. We dont explain how we can afford it. Every time you say free Community College it costs 6 billion per year. It would increase the number of people from an committee college from 6 billion to 9 million. They go there are those big spending democrats. We dont explain how we do this stuff. For example, when i was a senator in the 80s with reagan we have the tax code about 700 billion per year in tax expenditures. Its a fancy word for tax loopholes. Mortgage debt deduction. There also post either promote investment or promote growth or that is aial need. Trillion dollars per year that doesnt go into the treasury and we dont collect because of tax loopholes. All you have to do is go out there and that is a thing called the stepped up basis. 1 million worth of stock. One year later it is worth 2 million they have to pay at Capital Gains tax on the 1 million increase. Daddy day before your sells it, he passes away and leave it to marry or jamaal or move it or whomever they dont pay any tax. Its called the stepped up basis. It starts off at the basis of what the person inherited that. That cost a treasury 17 billion per year. It affects good people. 3 of the American Public who are already wealthy and lasting that they need is another 17 billion tax cut. Theres no evidence it increases productivity in any way. That, took 6 billion of you would increase gdp by 2 10 of 1 . Raising everybody up and you would have a better educated. Ublic cut in half the cost of fouryear colleges and another 11 billion reducing the deficit. With ourtart arguing republican friends in the toast mahout cost him much money. We are the ones talking about increased productivity. Whether once talking about better training for folks to have jobs in the future. And try to say the recovery act called for cities in the history of the United States. It embedded experts across city hall to help the mayors tackle the biggest problems. New roads and walkways in youngstown, ohio so that Young Children can walk to school safely. I could go on and on. As much Technical Assistance experts gave cities the cities taught us a lot more. Working directly with cities and forming lasting partnerships rather than just a voice on the telephone from d. C. A number of examples but let me talk about detroit. Graves was the point person for the entire effort to bring Detroit Office back onto its knees and on to its feet. He helped them leapfrog over where they had been. We provided Technical Support for 60,000 new streetlights saving the city 3 million per year but lighten up the parts of the city that have no lights and were not safe at all. Now half the city is the longer in darkness. Funds toion of demolish 8000 abandoned homes. I walk through many of those neighborhoods. You take it down to the home that never missed a mortgage payment with no one living there, now you increase the value of those homes. The washington, d. C. Suburban area they would be worth 150 thousand dollars. Communities that were havens for Illicit Activity homeowners nessie equity in their homes for the first time in decades. 80 million in federal grants to buy the buses people can go out work those jobs and come home. Now they can go to work go to school get to their families. Nationwide 35 of anicanamericans dont have our mobile to build to get to work. Despite our successes the evenlyy has not been shared. When i spoke to this organization and 1214i spoke to dr. King. He said, where do we go from here. He answered his own question and said, we have to honestly recognize for where we are now. I apologize for repeating what i said that think it is still a relevant question. We have to honestly recognize where we are right now. Progress. Eat High School Graduation rates for African Americans are the highest theyve ever been. As much progress as we have made. African americans and hispanics are way behind their counterparts. Im planning for black workers is twice that of white workers. The Median Household Income is nearly double that of black families. Is typical white family seven times that of the typical africanamerican family. In equities are rooted in inequities in opportunity and deeply in the institutional racism that people dont even look at or see or understand exists. The children of different races have the same opportunities in this country even when they have the same capabilities in the same background. 40 of black children live in poverty and him of over half are born for. Double the rate of white children born poor who stay portrayed. Who stay poor. Apples andng oranges, apples and apples. Dead did notose graduate high school are more likely to see their data in prison before they turn 14. Where only slowly beginning to knowledge institutional racism today. Black lives matter is a recognition of institutional racism but it is will beyond what happens in terms of enforcement. Let me give you a few examples. Look what is happened since the Supreme Court ruled on the Voting Rights act. They gutted the Voting Rights act. For the first time in the president ial campaign, 10 states will be enforcing restrictive voting laws that did not exist in the last election. Even though they cant show any evidence that there was inperson voter fraud. We are fighting this with the Justice Department everyday but it is a reality. What happened overnight. Where was this great fraud that othered, other than than the republicans taking over the house and senate. It was in front, they got elected. But telling what changed other than that . Taking over the governor seats. Compare where black middle class families and white middleclass families with the same or similar income can live. Where they can live is whether they can get an affordable mortgage. And whether the Real Estate Broker will actually sell them a house in the first place. But black limit black families are not being given the same opportunities. Because they cannot get a mortgage. Its the same income. But theyre pursuing this. For, i was one of the first guys to draft redlining legislation that you all ended up getting past in the 70s. Its just as distractive because you cannot get a mortgage. We had 100 10 million in shady lending practices. But the result is the same. Black families live in the neighborhood where the average income is 10,000 to 12,000 less where comparable white family would live at the same income. And the children in these black families of have the same opportunities. Theres powerful research that confirms what youve known for a long time. Schools, the, social norms are critical in shaping childrens mores and opportunities. Children from those middleclass families who cannot move into a neighborhood that has those they dont get higher income neighborhoods and they lose opportunity. They have the same economic power. Education. Black kids dont get the same access to resources as their white counterparts. Its that surprising the average black child arrives far less prepared than the average white child. From the time that a threeyearold child in a low income family for the time they are three, the will of heard 10,000 words spoken. Compare that to the average middle class, not just white but black. They will have heard 30 Million Words spoken. Just spoken, not how big your vocabulary is just spoken. Versus 30 million. You were taught by your mothers, talk to your baby constantly. Thats how they learn. Hats how they absorb we cannot let anyone defined on the capabilities of black children. If to expect much more from our children. My mother had it impression that children tend to become that which you expect of them. Ont dumb it down thats why with your help we are fighting like the devil for the funding of early universal education. When you get them earlier. Thats why we fighting for two years of Community College. 12 years of education. If your grandkids are going to write a senior thesis at a university 15 years from now. They will look back and say, why didnt they know that it mattered how early you intervened . That 12 made them think years of education was enough the 21st century. The rest of the world is awakened. The reason that we were so dominant as we were the first nation in the world including our european friends to have 12 years of universal education beginning in the 50s and 60s other nations to catch up. Folks, 12 years and enough. Weve come a long way but a lot more has to be done. Thate conclude by saying it comes down to one thing. Everybody deserves a fair shot and white and black and hispanic and asian are capable of doing extraordinary things if you give them a shot. Just give them the tools. Foundation. A job and transportation to get to a job. Health care. You just need a chance. You all know it. Present i believe that the sacrifice and the struggle should not fall just to those who are suffering and struggling. You quit something for my book i hadnt heard in a long time. Safetys sake own have to sacrifice a little bit. All of us. We used to be one of america. We thought about things in terms of, everybody has responsibility. In everybody has obligations the sacrifice is not great but the reward is a norm us. Win am deeply honored to this left him achievement award. But like yours. We are not done yet. I will be right here with you. Whether im in office are out of office and soon i will be out of office. Ive never been gainfully employed in my life. I dont know what i will do. And never cashed a paycheck in my entire life. You think im joking. I wanted some career advice from some of you. I want to stay involved with you. In a just saying it. I will be here with you pushing the next president to level the playing field. To give everyone a chance because like i said. Ordinary people do extraordinary things. With a last campaign, i will not mention a particular incident but i really got offended when one of the candidates said i had worked at mcdonalds and i had dreams, like i worked there and i did not have dreams . I did not have dreams in my neighborhood . Played ballid i with . He didnt have dreams . There is a thing that has arisen. They are not bad people but they have this distorted notion that somehow, if you come from means were a background and are educated that somehow you dream differently than we do. Im serious. Think about it. Ine you ever known a mother a tough neighborhood that didnt dream for the kid to go to college even though she dropped out of school in fourth grade or was strung out. Youre in a family in a tough neighborhood or a ghetto who didnt have a dream for their kids . Its all about giving people a chance. So i am proud to be associated with all of you. , mayless we you have done god protect our troops and i apologize for getting so into this. [applause]