Joe Biden announces new policy efforts aimed at black voters

Washington: Presumptive Democratic US presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign has unveiled a new plan to reduce racial wealth and health gaps among new policies aimed at reaching black voters.

Joe Biden with a voter in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Credit: AP

As part of the wide-ranging plans, the former vice-president pledged to open a new Public Credit Reporting Agency that could compete with private-sector credit reporting agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion and, according to the campaign, minimise racial disparities in lending.

"Today's credit reports, which are issued by just three large private companies, are rife with problems: they often contain errors, they leave many 'credit invisible' due to the sources used to generate a credit score, and they contribute to racial disparities, widening the African-American home ownership gap," Biden's campaign said in a statement.

Biden also promised a new tax credit for first-time homeowners; $US900 million ($1.4 billion) over eight years to finance efforts to save 12,000 lives in high-crime cities and expand the Small Business Administration's efforts to lend money to African American-owned enterprises.

Advocates say that few of those businesses have been able to tap federal relief programs during the coronavirus outbreak due to discriminatory lending practices.

Biden is looking to unseat Republican President Donald Trump in the November 3 election. Black voters were critical in helping Biden overcome early losses in his party's primary to become the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Biden is also eager to win over the most liberal wing of his party. Voters who preferred Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders favoured more restraints on banking and the financial services industry. The policies announced on Monday, US time, include an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, a fair-lending law governing banks, to include mortgage and insurance companies.

The 22-page Biden proposal includes some policies the campaign previously announced with new initiatives it said could help erase the gap between black and white Americans in terms of wealth, income, education, criminal justice and health.

A Biden campaign official said the candidate would be working to introduce more relevant policies on environmental issues and other areas of concern to black voters in coming weeks.

Reuters