Gephardt Shifts Focus to Minority Communities
WASHINGTON — Expanding the scope of his domestic agenda, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt proposed a series of measures Tuesday that would shift federal spending toward minority communities in an effort to increase opportunities that he said "for too long have been denied for too many."
The Missouri congressman's proposals represent one of the first efforts by the top-tier candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination to focus on the economic needs of minority voters.
"Today, the state of our racial disunion is clearly fractured along economic lines," he said in a speech in Hamtramck, Mich. "We cannot be a United States of America if all Americans are not united in opportunity."
Gephardt's proposals would not dramatically increase federal spending -- his campaign estimated they would cost slightly more than $1 billion. But his plan would alter rules for the government's contracting and purchasing system so that minority-owned businesses could get more federal money.
He also said that he would increase federal loans for minority-owned small businesses that qualified as economically disadvantaged and that he would press federal regulators to more closely monitor financial institutions to fight predatory lending to members of minority groups -- an approach that the Clinton White House favored.
The plan is rooted in measures that were at the center of efforts pushed during the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon decades ago, when each president sought to increase the flow of federal dollars to impoverished urban communities.
"These are not new ideas," said John D. Skrentny, a sociology professor at UC San Diego whose most recent book, "The Minority Rights Revolution," includes a chapter on the history of government assistance to urban centers.
Nevertheless, Skrentny said that if the aid were carefully targeted at disadvantaged minorities and that if it were to meet constitutional tests prohibiting illegal racial discrimination, it could be "really helpful."
Gephardt, in a telephone call with reporters after he delivered the speech, said that because his proposals largely involved shifting current spending, rather than expanding overall allocations and procurement, there would be little effect on the federal budget deficit.
In a campaign that has focused largely on the Iraq war, health care and the state of the overall economy, Gephardt's address reflects an effort to address the particular needs of minority voters.
