Democrats pass Race and Gender Quotas

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by: NEWSMAN

July 8, 2010

Racial, Gender Quotas in the Financial Bill?

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

WASHINGTON – What one finds when reading congressional legislation is invariably surprising. Take the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, for instance, which was created by merging Senate and House bills. When the Senate returns from recess one of its first actions will be to vote on the bill, which passed the House on June 30.

In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America’s financial industry.

In addition to this bill’s well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

…”The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency’s workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors…” “…

… “The mission, it says, is to assure “to the maximum extent possible the fair inclusion” of women and minorities, individually and through businesses they own, in the activities of the agencies, including contracting…”

How to define “fair” has bedeviled government administrators, university admissions officers, private employers, union shop stewards and all other supervisors since the cival rights era began.

This latest attempt by Congress to dictate what “fair” employment means is likely to encourage administrators and managers, in government and in the private sector, to hire women and minorities for the sake of appearances, even if some new hires are less qualified than other applicants. The result is likely to be redundant hiring and a wasteful expansion of payroll overhead….

…If the director decides that a contractor has not made a good-faith effort to include women and minorities in its workforce, he is required to contact the agency administrator and recommend that the contractor be terminated…”

8 thoughts on “Democrats pass Race and Gender Quotas”

Barron X says:

July 9, 2010 at 12:17 pm

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that is well represented in financial services ?

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Ralphie says:

July 9, 2010 at 6:56 pm

But you already knew that, didn’t you?

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Phoenix Rising says:

July 9, 2010 at 6:58 pm

Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion are present in many Federal departments; this provision adds them to those Federal agencies addressed by the financial reform bill.

In the Federal financial sector, perhaps 35% of the workforce is female (compared to 45% in the general Federal workforce, and 50.8% of the population). Similarly, perhaps 18.4% of Federal financial employees are minorities, compared to 30.2% in the Federal workforce and 34.6% of the population.

It is apparent that women and minorities still face large hurdles in the Federal financial sector; these new offices will work with the heads of the agencies to develop policies designed to ensure that women and minorities are not unfairly excluded from hiring, contracting, etc. “Good-faith effort” is a well-defined term, contrary to the negative article you posted; it means that, where resources exist and are competitive, those resources are considered in the decision-making process (e.g. RFQs go out to minority and women-owned contractors if they meet the capabilities required by a job).

(sources: Congresswoman Maxine Waters press release on the amendment that included this provision in the House bill and the Wikipedia U.S. Demographics page.)

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1. Barron X says:
  
  July 10, 2010 at 7:15 am
  
  .
  
  I’ve never heard of an “Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.” Is this something new ?
  
  What Departments have one ?
  
  This appears to combine advocacy for employment of those targeted groups with preference programs in contracting for those groups. In my dated experience, not a lot of overlap between these two areas. The Equal Opportunity part is historically an HR function, while the contracting preference programs are part of the Logistics/ Acquisition function.
  
  Post-Adarand, the contracting arena shifted somewhat from “race” based preference programs to the HUB Zone preference designed by Kit Bond. Only DoD, NASA and the Coast Guard still have a “Small Disadvantaged Business” Preference Program. The 8(a) Program has been “diluted” so much that the qualifying social and economic disadvantage has even been expanded to include GLBT, in some cases.
  
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  1. Phoenix Rising says:
    
    July 12, 2010 at 9:28 pm
    
    Look up the term on the InterTubes – not only do many Federal government departments have one, but also State governments.
    
    I can’t speak to the specifics of each of these offices – I’m sure each has differing rules and policies. Both the employment and contracting bits of this particular piece appear to be advocacy and oversight, not preference based.
    
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raymond1 says:

July 10, 2010 at 1:42 am

… you said

Democrats pass Race and Gender Quotas

How is this not simply a lie?

I think you need to return to posting nothing other than “I have a man-crush on Doug Bruce, who is like the persecuted Jesus of the tea party movement”…

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1. Phoenix Rising says:
  
  July 10, 2010 at 6:45 am
  
  Doug Bruce Has God-Like Qualities…
  
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jpsandscl says:

July 12, 2010 at 2:52 pm

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