Raise the Wage Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this is an important and significant week here in the Hall of the people's House because, this week, we are going to be introducing the Raise the Wage Act.

This argument has been going on for quite some time now; yet, frustratingly, despite all the time and energy that has been focused on this issue, the Federal minimum wage still has not been raised in almost a decade.

Depending on what measure of inflation you use, the minimum wage in real dollars is either at its lowest level in 50 years or its lowest level in 70 years. Either way is bad for American workers.

I want to particularly combat the perception some have that all minimum wage workers are teenagers. Actually, the average age of a minimum wage worker is 33 years old.

Any time you go into the local McDonald's or Burger King in my neighborhood, you can see in person that we are dealing with not just teen workers, but many who are in their thirties, forties, fifties, and many seniors who need to work in order to supplement their income.

I also want to highlight this important fact: 18.7 million children--almost 19 million children--are supported by parents who work full time at minimum wage jobs.

We are not talking about a government handout. We are not talking about helping those who aren't attempting to help themselves. We are talking about making sure a fair day's work actually pays. We are talking about rewarding hard-working Americans.

By the way, if you don't work a minimum wage job--you are just an ordinary taxpayer--you, too, would benefit from increasing the minimum wage.

Here is why. We have, right now in America, the highest percentage of minimum wage workers who are currently getting government assistance--food stamps, Medicaid, and other sorts of programs--because, despite working full time, they make so little, they qualify for government assistance.

By raising their wage, we would decrease the poverty rate and decrease the amount of money needed to be spent on public assistance programs.

Mr. Speaker, this is an issue about fairness; it is an issue about justice, but it is also an issue about what kind of an America we believe in, one that rewards hard work, one that rewards those who are going to work every day and working for a living, or one that just says the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent can continue to grow at the greatest rate of income in American history, while the other 70 percent of Americans are losing their share of income. That is wrong.

We believe in an America in which those who work hard and play by the rules should benefit. One way of ensuring this will happen is raising the minimum wage now.

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