Ambassador Susan Rice Remarks at Virtual National Briefing on Equity
THE WHITE HOUSE
FEBRUARY 16, 2023
As Prepared For Delivery:
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you to the members of the
public who are tuning in. I’m Susan
Rice, President Biden’s Domestic Policy Advisor. It’s my pleasure to
kick off today’s National Briefing on Equity. As I hope you’ve seen, earlier
this morning President Biden signed a new Executive Order to further advance
racial equity and support for underserved communities.
The President has made equity and racial justice a day
one priority for this Administration. Literally, on Day One, he signed his
first Executive Order on equity. This historic mandate charged the entire
federal government to tackle the challenges that generations of discrimination,
exclusion, and disinvestment cause for communities across our nation.
We know, however, that the fight for equity is not a
one-day project, a one-year project, or a two-year project. As the President
has said, it’s a generational commitment. This work gets to the heart of our
success as a nation. We’re working to ensure that everyone—including rural
communities, communities of color, Tribal communities, LGBTQI+ individuals,
people with disabilities, women and girls, first-generation Americans, and
communities impacted by persistent poverty—has every opportunity to realize the
promise of America. Despite what some politicians may say about equity efforts,
the truth is when we lift each other up, everyone benefits.
Under the first Executive Order on equity, President
Biden tasked agencies with changing the way they do business, ensuring that
equity is at the forefront of their work. It was a whole-of-government
endeavor. Agencies assessed their high-impact services to uncover where
systemic barriers to access may exist. Last April, 90 agencies used those
findings to produce more than 300 new strategies to support underserved
communities.
These strategies include bold actions such as working
with states to expand postpartum coverage for a year after childbirth to
address the maternal mortality crisis that disproportionately affects Black and
Native women; shifting the Environmental Protection Agency’s civil rights
enforcement from being complaint-driven to proactive to advance environmental
justice; translating more of the Justice Department’s public safety programs
into additional languages so that everyone can access vital information about
law enforcement; and providing better technical assistance to rural communities
so farmers and ranchers can secure federal funding to sustain and grow their
businesses.
Agencies are also prioritizing equity in implementing new
programs that invest in American communities under landmark legislation,
including the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPs and
Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act.
To give you just a few examples, through these landmark
laws, we are:
Replacing poisonous lead pipes that go into 10 million
homes and 400,000 schools and childcare centers, so every child in America can
drink clean water;
Replacing the nation’s existing fleet of school buses
with clean and zero-emission buses, ensuring cleaner and healthier air for
children and families;
Relieving debt obligations for tens of thousands of
distressed farm loan borrowers and farmers who have experienced discrimination;
Deploying record investments to Tribal Nations and Native
communities to provide affordable high-speed internet, safer roads and bridges,
modern wastewater and sanitation systems, clean drinking water, reliable and
affordable electricity, and programs for climate resilience and drought
mitigation;
Closing long-standing loopholes that enabled for-profit
colleges to aggressively target veterans and service members and low-income
students; and
Conducting robust outreach to veterans, particularly
veterans in underserved communities, to ensure that they know they are eligible
for benefits and health care under the PACT Act.
Already, we’ve achieved the most equitable economic
recovery in memory and created a record 12 million jobs, including 800,000
good-paying manufacturing jobs. We have brought down unemployment nationwide—in
particular for Black and Latino workers, for whom unemployment rates are near
50-year lows.
And we’re keeping our foot on the gas. Equity remains a
key priority for the President, and he reaffirmed his unwavering commitment to
this equity mandate with today’s second Executive Order on Advancing Racial
Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.
This new Executive Order strengthens the Administration’s
commitment to build an America in which all can participate, prosper, and reach
their full potential.
The Executive Order directs federal agencies to publish
annual action plans about how each agency is leveraging all of its resources
and programs to advance more equitable outcomes.
In developing these action plans, the Executive Order
directs agencies to engage regularly in consultation with underserved
communities—especially those communities that face legacy exclusions in
engaging with the federal government.
The President’s renewed mandate directs federal agencies
to increase support for rural and urban communities alike to ensure that there
is more equitable development in all communities.
The executive order also recognizes the importance of
fully delivering the promise of our civil rights laws by reinvigorating federal
civil rights offices, while preparing to address the emerging threats to civil
rights posed by technology and algorithmic discrimination.
It also directs agencies to strengthen their internal
efforts on equity—establishing senior leadership teams to coordinate this
whole-of-government mandate.
And, the Executive Order directs agencies to use the
federal budget, regulations, and other important tools to advance equity for
all communities.
For example, it formalizes the President’s goal of
increasing the share of federal contracting dollars awarded to small,
disadvantaged business by 50 percent by 2025.
This work matters deeply for communities across the
country, and we’re excited to continue implementing this equity mandate.
With that, I’ll turn it over to Shalanda Young, Director
of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Connecting the Dots:
Christopher
Edley Jr. was an associate director for economics & government for
the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and is a
board of adviser’s member for the American Constitution Society.
Open Society Foundations was a funder for the American
Constitution Society and the Atlantic Council of the United States
(think tank).
George Soros is the
founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations and was the
chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank),
Susan E. Rice was
a director at the Atlantic Council of the United States (think tank),
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), the
White House national security adviser, former U.S. ambassador to UN for
the Barack Obama administration and is President Biden’s Domestic
Policy Advisor.
Resources: Past
Research
Improper Food Stamp
Payments Hit $2.6 Billion (Past Research on the U.S.
Office of Management and Budget)
THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2016
https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2016/07/improper-food-stamp-payments-hit-26.html
Let’s connect the dots
and see where Susan Rice fits in the George Soros Network with Past Research (Past Research on Susan Rice)
SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 2020
https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2020/08/lets-connect-dots-and-see-where-susan.html
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