The Great Recession has hit minorities and women the hardest with the highest unemployment, the most home foreclosures, the biggest budget cuts and the resulting slow economic growth. On the day that the committee was formed, I sent a letter to both parties' leaders in the House and the Senate appealing to them to appoint minorities and women to the Super Congress committee.
Yet neither Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell nor Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has deemed it appropriate or felt the need to nominate a minority to the Super Committee that will have a lot to say about whose budget will be cut, whose taxes will rise, who will be ask to sacrifice and who will suffer the most under the new committee's decisions. And while women represent a majority of the U.S. population, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did appoint one woman to the committee. So far the nine appointees to the committee are comprised of eight white men, one white woman and no minorities. In other words, those who suffer the most under the present economic catastrophe are least represented on the new Super Congress committee.
Senator Mitch McConnell overlooked Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio and women Senators Kelly A. Ayotte, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Kay Bailey Hutchison on the Republican side. Senator Harry Reid did appoint Patty Murray but overlooked Hispanic Senator Robert Menendez, Asian Pacific Senators Daniel K. Akaka and Daniel K. Inouye and women Senators Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Mary Landrieu, Barbara Mikulski, Debbie Stabenow, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jeanne Shaheen, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kay Hagan and Maria Cantwell. Speaker Boehner overlooked African-American Republicans Tim Scott and Allen West, new Hispanic Americans Bill Flores, Francisco Canseco and Jamie Herrera, several Hispanic men and women who have been in the House for a while and all Republican women in the House.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi still has three slots to fill on the committee, and she has nearly 150 Democratic African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and women to choose from in the House of Representatives. Not only should she appoint minorities and women to the committee, but she should appoint someone who did not go along with and voted against the Obama-McConnell-Boehner deal!