Increase the Minimum Wage

Floor Speech

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Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Leger Fernandez for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to give voice to the millions of Americans who are calling on us to raise the wage.

Our minimum wage workers, many of whom we have come to call essential workers, have a base pay of $15,080 a year. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to know that you can't survive on $7.25. Yet, we expect millions of our neighbors to do it, even during a pandemic and an economic crisis.

From the North Carolina General Assembly to the U.S. House of Representatives, raising the wage has been part of my life's work. I know how a couple of dollars an hour can be the difference between prosperity and poverty. I know it because I have lived it. You see, my mom was a domestic worker. She cleaned other people's houses so I wouldn't have to, so I could focus on going to school and getting a good education. Day in and day out, I saw that no matter how hard she worked, her earnings were barely enough to get us by.

Colleagues, this is not because she didn't work hard enough. It is because she didn't make enough.

Now, decades later, that reality has only gotten starker and the need to address it more pressing. The minimum wage has been at $7.25 for over a decade, the longest stretch in U.S. history.

Mr. Speaker, it is simply impossible to pay the rent and feed your family when you are only making $1,250 a month. That is not far off from the average monthly rent of an apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Make no mistake about it, $7.25 is a poverty wage. That is why it is time to raise the wage to $15 an hour.

A $15 minimum wage would give 27 million low-wage workers a raise and lift nearly 1 million people out of poverty. In my district, in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, it would mean giving a raise to 80,000 working women. 146,000 workers in the 12th District would see an average pay increase of over $4,000 a year.

In this moment of crisis, as we grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, a $15 minimum wage is more important than ever.

It is also important to note that essential and frontline workers make up a majority of those who would benefit from this wage increase. I believe in essential wages for essential workers. That is why we can't pay an essential worker or any worker a poverty wage.

We must take action to deliver on our Nation's promise of equal opportunity for all. In the strongest possible terms, I urge support for increasing the Federal minimum wage to $15. If it can't happen in tomorrow's package, I urge our committee and this body to take it up next week because America cannot wait.

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Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman is exactly right. We have to do it, and we have to do it now.

Essential workers need essential opportunities to get a decent wage so that they can take care of their families. Working hard is not enough if you don't make enough. Right now, folks who are making this $7.25 do not make enough to make ends meet.

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Ms. ADAMS. That is right.

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