DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz Talks With Joyner, Madison

By Derrick Plummer, Regional Press Secretary

Today, the newly elected DNC Chair, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, appeared on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, where she discussed President Obama’s myriad accomplishments – accomplishments that have benefited African Americans and Americans of all backgrounds.  From health care and education to fixing our nation’s economy, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz emphasized the important work that President Obama and Democrats have been doing.

During her interview with Joyner, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz emphasized not only how President Obama has helped African Americans, but also what not having President Obama in office would mean to the African American community.

“Look at where we were, Tom, a little more than two and a half years ago.  The month before President Obama was inaugurated, the economy was bleeding seven hundred and fifty thousand plus jobs a month, and we were dropping like a rock in terms of our economy.   And that impact disproportionately affected African Americans because we know how much higher normally the unemployment rate is in the African American community.  So, when America is facing a recession, the African American community is facing a depression...now we’ve started to fight back, President Obama’s policies have been effective.  We’ve had 14 straight months of job growth, we added 268,000 private sector jobs last month and things are beginning to turn around.  If you look at the financial aid and school support for higher education that President Obama has passed into law, that has also helped so many African Americans make sure they could get a college education and advance their goals.  If you look at the health care reform legislation that is now law, disproportionately African Americans have a much higher rate of being uninsured.  So now if you look at the direction Republicans want to take us, which is to repeal health care reform, which also would repeal the financial aid piece which was attached to health care reform, which would focus exclusively on the wealthiest one percent of Americans and continue subsidies to big oil and ignore the middle class and working families – then not only is the African American community specifically better off with President Obama in office; they would be far worse off without him.”

Later in the morning during an interview with “The Black Eagle” Joe Madison, DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz further contrasted the President’s priorities and Democrats’ priorities – job growth, education and winning the future – with Republican legislatures’ priority across the country, which has been voter disenfranchisement.  Said DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz:

“Look at the results of some of the Republican led legislative sessions in the last few months.  What they’ve been trying to do where they  can’t win at the ballot box they’ve been trying to rig the outcome in advance.  And Republican legislatures across this country during their legislative sessions have been passing bills under the guise of protecting against so called voter fraud, which has been proven to be essentially nonexistent in this country.  And passing laws that are designed to disenfranchise large swaths of voters.”

“If you remember Joe after the 2000 election Congress passed the H.A.V.A [Help America Vote Act], which is national legislation to expand access to the polls, to make sure that in the face of recounts being shut down and the disenfranchisement of literally hundreds of thousands of voters in Florida it was absolutely essential that we open up access to the polls.  And what the Republicans are doing now that they have retaken the levers of power in many state legislatures, they are trying to reverse those advances...”