Clyburn 'Sick and Tired of Pleasantries' with GOP 'When People are Going Hungry'

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), blasting the other side of the aisle for a Senate block of the minimum wage bill, said he’s “sick and tired of having these pleasantries bandied about when people are going hungry.”

“They are just absolutely against doing anything that would benefit working men and women. They are — they saw the rush to put this big tax cuts for the wealth of people in the House budget to deny a minimum wage increase on the Senate for working men and women,” the assistant minority leader said of congressional Republicans on MSNBC.

“They are doing a sort of a tag team yesterday and today as you just mentioned, we met with the chair of the Budget Committee of the Congressional Black Caucus did and we still…. We have some historical college and universities that have lost 10 percent of their student bodies in the last year all because of the policies that have been perpetrated by these Republicans in the House of Representatives.”

Clyburn said the minimum wage block “has adverse racial impact.”

“One thing I’ve learned in those — of almost 18 years I’ve spent running a state agency in South Carolina is that we have to look at the policy and we don’t worry about what your intent may have been. But if the impact, the result has an adverse racial impact then we see that as being discriminatory and that’s not me saying that, that is what the United States Supreme Court had said,” he said.

“That’s what Congress has said — that we look at the results of your action and they’ll determine whether not it has a disparate impact on people of color.”

At the Congressional Black Caucus’ closed-door meeting yesterday with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Clyburn said he detailed to Ryan “488 counties in the United States of America where 20 percent or more of the population that — they are stuck” as far as wage growth.

“And I asked him would he join with us in the Congressional Black Caucus and target resources throughout the discretionary budget into those communities so that at least 10 percent of that money will go to these communities,” Clyburn continued. “And I reminded him that this is not partisan here — two thirds, fully 68 percent of those counties, are represented by Republicans. So we aren’t asking him to do anything for Democrats… I’m going to do it for poor people.”