James Traficant: “I have a small, little amendment. It is a sense of the Congress at this point, a sense of the Congress that says when…”

“I have a small, little amendment. It is a sense of the Congress at this point, a sense of the Congress that says when Federal agencies are providing economic development grants their primary focus should be on communities with high poverty and unemployment rates. Very simple. This past year, the Vice President announced 15 empowerment zones for urban areas. Those empowerment zones are worth $230 million over the next 10 years. They had a four-tier scale measuring system. One of those was to measure the quality of the plan submitted. That was worth 25 points. The second one was private-public sector commitments. That was worth 25 points. The third one was poverty and unemployment rates, worth 25 points. The bottom line was, when it was all over, there were communities around America that had low unemployment rates that ended up getting empowerment zones because they were able to get private sector commitments. One issue in case is the Youngstown-Warren area that has a 51 percent poverty rate, my district, and an almost 20 percent unemployment rate.”