Maxine Waters On Jobs, Unemployment: 'The Tea Party Can Go Straight To Hell'

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) had some harsh words for the Tea Party at a forum in Inglewood, California Saturday.

With California's jobless rate now 12 percent, the second-highest rate of unemployment in the nation after Nevada, talk about jobs, the economy and the partisan squabbling in Congress dominated the “Kitchen Table Summit.”

"I'm not afraid of anybody," Waters told the crowd. "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the Tea Party can go straight to hell."





Waters has been outspoken on the topic of the unemployment crisis facing African-Americans.

Last week, she 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."




On Sunday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) echoed Waters' remarks, telling CNN's Candy Crowley that African-Americans are “totally frustrated, and people need to know that the president feels their pain.”

“Almost every African-American person I spoke to said he needs to fight, and fight harder,” Cummings said.