Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), responding to the high unemployment rates in the black community, said that African-Americans feel President Barack Obama "needs to fight, and fight harder."
“We are totally frustrated, and people need to know that the president feels their pain,” Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, told CNN's Candy Crowley on “State of the Union” Sunday.
“Almost every African-American person I spoke to said he needs to fight, and fight harder,” Cummings said.
Last week, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) blasted Obama for ignoring the black community during his bus tour through the midwest.
"We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he's not in any black community," she said at a jobs forum in Detroit. "We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don't know what the strategy is," she continued. “We’re supportive of the president, but we getting tired, y’all, getting tired."
Last month, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), told members of the House Out of Poverty Caucus that African-Americans were fed up waiting for the president to take forceful action to address the jobs crisis in the black community.
“We want him to know from this day forward that we’ve had it. We want him to come out on our side not to watch and wait… We’re suffering,” Conyers said.
On CNN, Cummings said that he does not believe Obama is taking the African-American vote/community for granted, but he stressed that the president “needs to hear that there are a lot of people suffering. ... He needs to go back to the horse that brought him in.”