Cedric Richmond

We are sacrificing city services that would keep people from having to deal with the police or the sheriff's department.

I really would like the Department to do something on that as we talk about criminal justice reform and move forward.

I want to thank you for that commitment and working with the ranking member of the subcommittee...

Mr. Chairman, let me just thank you for taking the time to come down to New Orleans and have a subcommittee hearing.

So we just have to make sure that the spirit of the law and the goals are what we reach...

Watching my parents who had a small business and the fact that they employed everyone and they didn't do background checks, they just looked at you and if they thought you were a good person after they talked to you, they gave you a…

Every dollar we spend on incarceration makes the country less safe, so we need to figure it out.

The most important thing we have to do is ensure that they are either employed and employed at a wage where they can support and sustain themselves.

52 percent unemployment among African American males is not sustainable for any community in the country.

We want to make sure that opportunities are afforded to people who benefit from public housing.

Let me just start off where Maxine left off. We talk about economic development and all those things...

I think that if we can design a program at some point where we could allow that to happen, I think that would be--

As we move forward, there must be some sort of serious discussion as far as how we increase our inventory for those affordable units.

We want to be an elite City, we just don't want to be a City of the elite.

If we would have included the people in the community as we developed policies, we would have used replacement value or rebuilding cost instead of appraised value.

We worked together to reform Biggert-Waters to make sure that our flood insurance remained reasonable.

Let me just publicly thank the ranking member of the full committee, Maxine Waters, for her assistance.

I stood with several local officials and advocates to call for the one-for-one replacement of every unit demolished in the City's public housing developments.

I would hate to be in your job. But let me just ask, and I know there is a lot of talk about a number of issues, but I am going to get a little local in my area, because we do have the largest petrochemical footprint in the United States…

We're not because we're so stuck on saying that I'm pro-life. Yeah, until the baby is born.

The hypocrisy in the room is unbelievable.

I do commend the Chairman because we have worked in a bipartisan manner, for the most part, because it is so important.

I think we have a role to play in oversight; I think we have a role to play in planning the mission; but I think that there are other people who actually go out and run the plays after we meet in the huddle and we call the play.

I guess I am just as concerned that--it is my understanding that the Majority side is working on a reorganization also, and I would just hope that we don't get into, you know, a power contest about who does what and when and we just…

But the things you can do that you think bring in efficiencies, make us more secure, and are going towards the Unity of Effort you all are moving forward with?