The White House Blog: The Vice President

Holly Petraeus Gets It

This evening, Vice President Biden sent the email below to the White House email list.  If you didn't get it, be sure to sign up for our list.

I want to make sure you heard a piece of news from Capitol Hill today.

This morning, Holly Petraeus, who has been leading an office at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect military families, went to Capitol Hill to highlight some of the most abusive practices our service members face in today's financial marketplace.
 
She explained that military families are the targets of predatory lenders. She talked about how many service members and their families struggle to make ends meet -- especially during deployments. And she said that the CFPB will help combat the lenders who try to take advantage of people with deceptive, unfair, and abusive lending practices.
 
But here's the thing: The Senate still hasn't confirmed President Obama's nominee to lead the CFPB, a former Attorney General from Ohio named Rich Cordray. The bureau needs a director to fully ensure that the debt collectors, private student loan providers, and payday loan providers are properly supervised and that consumers are not put at risk of falling prey to the same kinds of abusive practices that helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
 
Rich has spent his career advocating for middle class families, and enjoys broad, bipartisan support from the elected officials, business leaders, and consumer groups who have worked with him.

Take a minute to read what Holly had to say, and share her testimony with those you know.

Why There Is No Time to Waste In Putting Cops Back On The Beat

On Thursday night, Senate Republicans once again blocked a plan to put laid off cops and firefighters back to work protecting communities across the country. This partisan obstruction carries serious consequences – for the economy, and for the safety and wellbeing of all Americans.

State and local budget cuts have proven devastating to cities like Flint, Michigan, where Vice President Biden visited last week. More than half of the police force has been laid off in the past three years. In 2008, Flint employed 259 police officers. Now they have just 125.  At the same time, violent crime increased.  

Citing statistics from the City of Flint Police Department, Vice President Biden pointed to spikes in murder and rape to describe the heavy toll crime is taking in Flint.    

Some have questioned the validity of the Flint statistics, because they differ from FBI figures, but city crime data can vary from FBI crime data due to different definitions of crime. This is particularly true when it comes to rape. Just this week the FBI took steps to begin to update the definition it uses – a definition that hasn’t been updated since 1927. The City of Flint defines rape differently and, therefore, collects that information differently.

City of Flint Public Safety Director Chief Alvern Lock said of the information provided to the Vice President, “This information is the most accurate data and demonstrates the rise in crime associated with the economic crisis and the reduced staffing levels.”

According to Chief Lock,"The discrepancies with the FBI and other sources reveal the differences in how crimes can be counted and categorized, based on different criteria." Experts agree that a police department’s statistics about local crime can be more up to date than the FBI’s.

But make no mistake, the debate over crime statistics distracts from the real issue. What’s happening in Flint is troubling. And communities across the country are facing similar tough situations. 

The American Jobs Act contains $5 billion to help communities such as Flint rehire laid off cops and firefighters. It’s a shame that every single Republican in the Senate voted Thursday night to block putting those first responders back to work.

Let’s not lose sight of the real issue here. The fewer police officers on the street, the harder it is to fight crime, whether stolen cars or assaults.  

“Anyone who would question the value or impact of having a marked police unit actively patrolling an urban neighborhood with high crime rates, has obviously never lived or tried to raise a family in such an environment,” said Camden, New Jersey Chief of Police J. Scott Thomson. “Often the presence of a uniformed officer is the determining factor of whether or not a disturbance escalates into an act of violence or order is maintained.”

Thomson continued, “Police leaders do need to have the capacity which also affords the flexibility to effectively deploy officers to combat the thugs and criminals that are negatively defining the lives of the residents in a community.  This is why Camden (post layoff) has forsaken other functions and restructured its organization to have 92% of all available sworn personnel in a forward leaning position to address street crime and shape outcomes. “

As the Vice President said in Flint, “There are a few things everybody knows for a fact -- we can argue a lot about law enforcement.  But we know one thing:  The more law enforcement officers we have, the better opportunity to make our streets safe, our neighborhoods safe and our businesses and places of worship safe.”

Having enough officers means a department can deploy innovative strategies like community policing in high crime neighborhoods.  These tactics reduce crime. So when a city like Flint has to cut community policing and can’t send patrol cars to park on the corner in a crime hot spot, they lose an important crime fighting tool.   

“There is no question that the number of cops makes a difference when it comes to controlling crime rates,” says Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.  “Whether it is a large department, midsize or small there is a staffing level that if you fall below, your ability to be effective on the street is impacted and as a result, crimes rates will rise.”

The American Jobs Act will provide help desperately needed by communities across the country, putting fire fighters and police officers back to work to keep neighborhoods safe.

First Responders Say the American Jobs Act Will "Allow Us to Respond Safely and More Effectively"

Vice President Biden was in Flint, Michigan to talk with fire fighters and police officers about the American Jobs Act.

Right now, local communities across the country are laying off first responders as policymakers struggle with budget cuts in the tough economy. It’s putting public safety at risk. 

In Michigan, the Vice President said, "The President and I believe that the single-most basic obligation a government has -- it exceeds -- the single-most basic obligation is to keep its citizens safe.  It’s literally -- everything flows from that.  All our civil rights flow from being able to be safe in our streets, in our homes, our schools, our businesses.  Everything flows from it.”

That's why the American Jobs Act calls for $5 billion for local governments to keep police and fire fighters on the job. 

Watch the Vice President and listen to these first responders tell their stories about why these funds are so necessary.

Vice President Joe Biden Discusses the American Jobs Act in Flint, Michigan

Vice President Joe Biden greets members of the audience after speaking about the American Jobs act at the fire station in Flint, Michigan, October 12, 2011. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

Vice President Biden traveled to two Michigan cities this week to highlight how the American Jobs Act would help put cops and firefighters back on the beat and help modernize schools.

In Flint, Michigan, the Vice President made clear how the Jobs Act would both create jobs and protect the nation's "most basic obligation" to keep our citizens safe by putting cops and firefighters back to work. Over the past 18 months, Flint has been has been forced to cut its police force in half due to budget cuts at the same time violent crime has increased in the city.

Nationally, in the past 18 months, 10,000 cops have been laid off around the country, while 30,000 police vacancies have gone unfilled. Thousands of firefighters were laid off between 2009 and 2010, and another 7,000 could face possible layoffs this year.

"It's hard enough to do your job in good economic times. It's a tough job in good times," the Vice President told a group of Flint cops and firefighters assembled inside the city's fire department on Wednesday. "But it's almost impossible to serve the total needs of the community in bad economic times when you get cut in half."

The American Jobs Act includes $5 billion to support public safety jobs across the country. It will also dramatically improve the way cops, firefighters and other first responders are able to communicate with each other during emergency situations by deploying a nationwide public safety broadband network.

"I don't buy people who say there is nothing we can do," said the Vice President. "This is a fight for the soul of this country. It's a fight for the middle class. ... It's about making sure America's fire departments, police departments continue to be a large part of the American fabric and be able to do their job. It's about reversing the cycle of crime and fire and unemployment, and starting a new cycle of jobs and prosperity. It's about keeping you safe so you can keep all of us safe. And it's about a President and I who are prepared to fight like crazy to do whatever we can to make sure that you have the resources to be able to protect us."