Minimum Wage Fairness Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Madam President, we are now debating legislation that will be up for a vote tomorrow. It will be a cloture vote on bringing a minimum wage increase bill to the floor.

Let's be clear about this. It is a cloture vote. This means it is going to take 60 votes, and that will happen tomorrow. I assume most of the day we will be discussing that. I hope so. I know others have come to the floor previously to discuss this.

As the chairman of the committee and as the chief sponsor of this bill, I intend to be back on the floor later today to respond to some of the allegations made by Senators on the other side of the aisle regarding this bill and minimum wage as a concept, but I wish to take a few minutes to sort of set the stage for this legislation and what it is going to mean for our economy and for working Americans.

What I would say at the outset is that the minimum wage bill is about a lot of things: It is going to give an economic boost. It will increase the GDP of our country. It will do a lot of good economically for our society, but basically it is about economic fairness. It is about what kind of society we want America to be.

Keep in mind, the Fair Labor Standards Act which set the minimum wage was passed at the end of the Depression, 1939, when we were still in the Depression, and it was immediately to give a raise in wages to hard-working Americans. That is what it did.

Since that time, actually on both sides of the aisle, we have raised the minimum wage a number of times. This is just another step in making sure that those at the bottom of the economic ladder in America also get a hand up, to get help to make sure they too have a fair shot at the American dream.

So that is what this minimum wage bill is truly about. It is about core American values; the value that no one who works full time all year long should live in poverty. That is what this is about.

The fact is the value of the minimum wage has eroded so much over the last few years that the minimum wage right now is way below poverty. In other words, someone can work full time every day, all year long, and they are still in poverty. But they are working every day. That is not fair. The American value system is one that if someone puts in their work and works hard, they ought not to be living in poverty.

Right now, tens of millions of Americans are struggling just to keep a roof over their heads, to pay the heating bill, to find some money for an extra pair of shoes for a growing child, even getting money together to take the bus to work. Think about this: A minimum wage worker's paycheck has stayed the same since 2009. This chart illustrates what has happened.

If we go back to 2009, the minimum wage has increased zero percent. But look what has gone up: Electricity has gone up 4.2 percent; rent, 7.3 percent; auto repairs, 7.6 percent; food at home, 8.8 percent. This is since 2009. Childcare has gone up 11.7 percent. Mass transit, which is how people who make minimum wage get back and forth to work, has gone up 17.8 percent since 2009. Yet their paycheck has not gone up.

What does this chart tell us? This tells us that people making minimum wage are falling further and further behind because these are things that low-income Americans have to spend money on: lights, rent, fixing up their old car, food, childcare, and mass transit. Look how much they have gone up. Yet the minimum wage has stayed the same. That is why this is a value issue.

When people who work hard and play by the rules have to rely upon food stamps and food banks to feed their children and the minimum wage has them trapped in poverty, it is unacceptable. It is un-American. It is not what our Nation is about.

So Americans deserve a raise. That is why this bill raises it from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour in three annual steps. It will link the minimum wage to the cost of living in the future. In other words, we index it for the future so we don't have this prospect that as other things increase in price, the minimum wage stays the same. It is time to index it in the future.

Our bill also provides for a raise for tipped workers--the people who serve your food, push the wheelchairs at the airports, and park cars. Every time I tell somebody this, they tell me I can't be right; I must be mistaken. I tell them the tipped wage today is $2.13 an hour, and it has been that way since 1991. Not a 1-cent increase since 1991. People find that hard to believe. It is hard to believe, but it is very true.

So our bill would increase tipped wages from $2.13 an hour up to 70 percent of the minimum wage over a 6-year period of time, the first increase in tipped wages in 23 years.

An increase in the minimum wage benefits everyone. Twenty-eight million workers will get a raise--15 million are women, so over 50 percent of the increase--4 million African-American workers; 7 million Hispanic workers; and 7 million parents will get a raise. And we forget about this. How about our kids? Fourteen million kids will benefit from a minimum wage increase. That means their families will get an increase in the minimum wage. This benefits the kids. So think about the children in America. They are going to get a raise too.

Again, raising the minimum wage helps our families and it helps our economy. This is why we had a press conference this morning with a group called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage. One thousand businesses across the country representing every State in our Nation have signed on saying: Yes, we need to increase the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour. They understand and Main Street businesses understand this.

If we increase the minimum wage for people in the community, they are not running off to Paris, France, to spend the money. They are going to spend that money on Main Street, and that helps our small businesses. This is why so many small businesses get it. They understand that if we raise the minimum wage, that helps them. That helps the local economy on Main Street.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that our minimum wage bill will put $35 billion in the hands of millions of workers, and that money will be spent on Main Street. It will pump an additional $22 billion into our GDP, supporting 85,000 new jobs as the raise is phased in over 3 years.

There is another issue I think we need to address, and that is what happens with low-wage workers and how they do sustain themselves. They are in poverty from the minimum wage. So what do they rely on? They rely on food stamps, Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. They rely upon the earned-income tax credit and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. That costs taxpayers in America $243 billion a year.

Again, I am not saying that by increasing the minimum wage we are going to knock that down to zero. I can't say that, but what I can say is that a study was done just on food stamps, and if we raise the minimum wage, in the first year we will save $4.6 billion in taxpayers' money because people will now have enough money to go out and buy their own food. They will not rely on food stamps.

A lot of these other things will be cut back too, such as TANF and Medicaid or CHIP. I can't say how much, but people understand that this is what we are paying as taxpayers to support a minimum wage below the poverty line.

Again, people understand how important this minimum wage is. That is why it is so broadly supported by such a cross-section of American people.

Here is a poll that has been done. A USA Today and Pew Research Center poll this year indicated that 73 percent of all voters support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour--90 percent Democrats, 71 percent Independents, and even 53 percent of Republicans believe we ought to raise it to at least $10.10 an hour.

So the American people get it. There is overwhelming support for raising the minimum wage. But I am just mystified by how vehemently my Republican colleagues oppose this modest increase. I just don't understand it. But what I hear is the same old outdated, disproved arguments against giving working Americans a raise.

There are some on the other side who believe we should do away with the minimum wage. There should be no minimum wage at all. Try that one on for size. Talk about a race to the bottom. Four dollars an hour maybe? Three dollars an hour? Two dollars an hour? You see, I have always said that without a strong minimum wage and without a good, strong Wage and Hour Division at the Department of Labor to make sure people adhere to it--if we don't have that, then there is always someone a little worse off than you who will bid lower than you for that job.

So someone says: We will pay $7 an hour. There is always somebody that just needs the job a little more, they are desperate, and they say: I will take it for $6 an hour. Then there are some a little worse off than that who say: We will take it for $5 an hour, and we get a downward spiral.

That is why I say our American value is to have a strong minimum wage, whereby people who work hard--and some of these jobs are hard work. People are on their feet 8 hours a day or they are doing some manual labor or they are doing the kind of jobs a lot of people don't do. Yet they live in poverty. It is not right. Raising the minimum wage is common sense that adheres to our American values and gives everyone a fair shot at the American dream.

I hope my colleagues will do the right thing and vote for cloture, allow us to get on the bill. We can have some amendments offered, and we can vote to give working Americans a raise after all these years.

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