Marcia Fudge in The New Republic


On Principles & Values: Stop limiting black cabinet members to HUD or Labor

Almost exactly one month ago, in an interview with Politico, Ohio Representative Marcia Fudge criticized how former presidents were expected to assemble their Cabinets. "As this country becomes more and more diverse, we're going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in. You know, it's always 'we want to put the Black person in Labor or HUD,'" said Fudge, who is Black.
Source: The New Republic on Biden Cabinet Dec 14, 2020

On Welfare & Poverty: Fought cuts to food stamp program

Despite Fudge's best efforts to assure the public she is both capable of and enthusiastic about the job, her interview with the Plain Dealer was painful to read. Asked what her priorities were at the agency, she replied in part, "You know, deal with the lack of low-income and moderate income housing in this country. There are lots and lots of things to deal with, quite frankly." In a separate interview, she emphasized that leading HUD would still allow her to work on food security.

A longtime member of the House Agriculture Committee, Fudge chairs the subcommittee on nutrition, which has oversight of USDA. She gained national recognition for vociferously fighting the Trump administration's effort to slash the food stamp program and has a progressive understanding of the agency's role in not just food production but also nutrition policy, child hunger, and land conservation.

Source: The New Republic on Biden Cabinet Dec 14, 2020

On Welfare & Poverty: Public housing should be a stopping point, not a lifetime

On public housing: "This is the big part of this for me, is to empower communities to understand that public housing or low income housing should not be a lifetime, it should be just a stopping point," Fudge said. "The only way we make that happen is by empowering them to get jobs in their own communities." That's not exactly a thumping rejection of Carson's school of thought, which was that poverty is a "state of mind" that people can overcome with enough hard work.
Source: The New Republic on Biden Cabinet Dec 14, 2020

The above quotations are from Columns and news articles in The New Republic magazine.
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