Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5672, Science, State, Justice, Commerce, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 5672, SCIENCE, STATE, JUSTICE, COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (House of Representatives - June 27, 2006)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I am urging every Member to vote ``no'' on the rule as a protest against the Rules Committee action in refusing to allow a minimum-wage increase amendment to be attached to this bill.
I know that there are some people that say it shouldn't be on this bill; but the fact is, Mr. Hoyer and I and several others tried to have it attached to the Labor-Health-Education appropriations bill, and after we won, with the help of seven Republicans and 1 Democrat, the House Republican leadership decided to prevent that bill from coming to the floor of the House. So now we are trying to attach it to this bill.
I make no apology for that. The majority leader of the Senate attached 40 pages of unrelated language to the defense bill last year, language which insulated the pharmaceutical industry from lawsuits.
This issue is not about committee jurisdiction. This issue is about whose side are you on. For more than 9 years, we have seen no increase in the minimum wage. I take that problem personally, because after my parents were divorced, my mother worked for the minimum wage, and I can tell you how it feels to see a woman work 40 hours and come home with less than $40 in the check. It doesn't feel very good.
I can tell you how it feels to see you run out of money before you run out of days of the month, so at the end of every month, you have to take a household item, a table or a lamp or a radio, down to Etzkins' Pawn Shop to get a little money to get through the month. And the outrageous fact is that today, the minimum wage buys less than it did when my mother was earning it a number of years ago.
This Congress has an obligation to do something about that, but it hasn't. In the meantime, food prices have gone up by 20 percent, housing costs have gone up by 25 percent, medical expenses have gone up by 40 percent, and gas prices have doubled.
Last week, this institution voted to take no action to block a cost-of-living increase for Members of Congress. It takes a woman working at the minimum wage 4 months to earn the equivalent of that congressional COLA. Four months. What is the matter with people in this institution if they can justify a COLA increase for Members of Congress at the same time that they have been blocking a minimum-wage increase for 9 years? I find it outrageous.
I don't want to hear this baloney about, ``Oh, President Clinton warned that he would veto the minimum wage a few years ago.'' President Clinton was a strong proponent of the minimum-wage increase. He was forced to warn the Congress that he would find a bill fiscally irresponsible if the Congress took the minimum wage and attached it to over $200 billion in tax giveaways and tax cuts that were paid for totally with borrowed money.
So let's not have any nonsense on this floor about how President Clinton, after all, resisted the minimum wage. What President Clinton did was to resist the taking of the minimum wage hostage to the tax writing, borrow-to-pay-for-tax-cut schemes of the majority party.
So, Madam Speaker, this, to me, is a matter of elemental decency. It is a matter of equity. A Congress that does nothing to stand in the way of a cost-of-living increase for itself is a Congress that certainly ought to have the decency to pass a minimum-wage increase for the people we are talking about.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, the gentleman says that this is an inappropriate bill to which to attach the minimum wage. The majority party has routinely attached gigantic pieces of legislation to appropriation bills.
The Senate majority leader did that, as I just recited a few minutes ago, on an outrageous special interest provision insulating the drug companies from legal suit just a few months ago.
Let me tell you what is inappropriate. What is inappropriate is to have a bunch of guys wearing suits in this Chamber sit on their duffs for 9 years and not find a way to increase the minimum wage for the lowest paid workers in this country. That is what is inappropriate.
This is what is outrageous, and that is why the ranking of this Congress is less than 23 percent in the public opinion polls. I would like to find somebody in that 23 percent. I cannot believe there are 23 percent of the people who think this Congress has lived up to its obligations to middle-income workers and the middle class.
The fact is, you can either help raise the minimum wage or you can stand as an obstacle to it. So far, the Rules Committee has stood as an obstacle to it. The Republican leadership of this House has stood as an obstacle to it. When we did attach it to the most appropriate appropriations bill, your leadership blocked that bill from coming forward.
So give me a break. It is not that you do not think this is the appropriate vehicle. It says your party, by a 2-1 ratio, in this House is really against the minimum wage increase; and that is outrageous after you have just voted to give yourself a COLA.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I would simply like to point out small business employment between 1997 and 2003 grew at a faster rate in States with a higher minimum wage than it did in Federal minimum wage States, 9.4 percent versus 6.6 percent.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov/