Political Quotes

“today, I rise to urge my colleagues to take a stand for civil rights and basic financial fairness and join us in defense of the Community Reinvestment Act. I appreciate my distinguished colleagues from Delaware and the ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee, Senator Brown, for their remarks. For more than four decades now, this core civil rights law has helped ensure that banks that do business in our low- and moderate-income communities actually invest--invest--in those communities. Before the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, as it is called, banks often avoided lending to customers and businesses in the lower income neighborhoods where they opened branches. This practice was known as redlining because, back then, banks would draw literal red lines around the communities that they did not want to lend money to. Not surprisingly, the communities that were redlined were African American, Latino, and low-income communities. In essence, they were content to take the deposits from low- and moderate-income families, people of color, small businesses, and farms, but then they turned around and denied those very customers mortgages, loans, and other lines of credit. The Community Reinvestment Act was enacted to put an end to that redlining and spur greater investment in our minority communities and lower income neighborhoods. But even today, we are still grappling with the socioeconomic and racial consequences of this systemic financial discrimination.…”