This is not about skin color. It is about what I would call 'stressed' communities.

The CPC alternative budget does this by providing for the responsible and orderly redeployment of our troops and military contractors from Iraq and Afghanistan, saving more than $1.5 trillion above current law spending levels over 10 years.

It is important to protect health equity and the access to affordable healthcare.

Investing in our crumbling infrastructure will create jobs and help our economy get back on track.

We can gain robust and immediate savings also from paring down the Pentagon's budget.

I am here to ask today that we tackle the issue of the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in our society.

Over the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic and deliberate transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very, very rich.

Twenty-seven million, 31,000.

Yes, we have to reduce our deficits and debt, no doubt about it in terms of our long term economic growth.

It is about people who are locked and why the gap is continuing to get wider.

I'd like to use that call for a Domestic Marshall Plan as a jumping off point for my remarks this morning.

I would ask the committee to look into this and to see whether or not it makes sense for us to begin targeting resources where the needs really are.

However, we believe the reforms could go farther by including a public option that would provide competition to private insurers and reduce the cost of health care for working families and the Federal Government.

I do believe that we are responsible for responding to need.

The Congressional Black Caucus worked diligently for the passage of the Affordable Care Act. However, this is not enough.

If you cut too fast too deeply, you will slow down a very fragile recovery and threaten to put people out of work.

We cannot win the future by leaving people behind.

We must continue to invest in people.

Not only do we need revenues, but we need to do it in a fair way.

The budget resolution must include a substantial job creation initiative to get our economy moving.

They are crying out for a response from us.

I have introduced H.R. 1124, the Fairness in Taxation Act, which would create new tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires.

It is necessary to fully fund Community Development Block Grants. It provides the greatest return on investment for creating jobs.

I want to take a few minutes to talk about the future. Last December, when faced with the prospect that tax rates for the richest 2 percent of Americans would rise to where they were in the 1990s, when we balanced the budget and enjoyed…

This is a very important amendment, and I have called it the 10-20-30 amendment. It deals with what we call ``persistent poverty counties''--those places in America that have experienced a poverty rate of at least 20 percent for the last…