William Bradley: “barely a year has passed since I rose on this floor to introduce my urban community-building initiative, eight bills…”

“barely a year has passed since I rose on this floor to introduce my urban community-building initiative, eight bills designed to give creative people in communities at the heart of the turmoil the tools to rebuild strong, supportive communities. We sought to give children a safe and nurturing environment, to help communities repair themselves, to help individuals find and get to jobs, to help poor people develop assets for the future, and to restore strong financial institutions that help communities save their own money, invest, borrow, and grow. A year later, we are beginning to see communities pull together around their applications to become empowerment zones and enterprise communities, through which we will invest $1 billion for six of the innovative programs I proposed. One of the programs to give children a better chance in life, Community Schools, passed the Senate in the crime bill and is progressing through the House. And today we are finally passing legislation to bring basic financial institutions back to impoverished cities and rural areas, along the lines of the Community Capital Partnership Act that I introduced a year ago.”