Raise the Wage Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Scott for yielding.

I do find it interesting to sit and listen to a debate today where people who make $174,000 a year and half of which are millionaires are telling people they should be satisfied trying to exist on $15,000 a year, which is the very reason we are here today: to try to raise the wage for 33 million people, a quarter of the workforce in this country.

No family in the United States can live on $7.25 an hour and make ends meet.

In my home State of Wisconsin, you would have to work 93 hours a week at minimum wage in order to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment, and there is not a single county in the country where a worker earning the minimum wage for 40 hours a week can afford a two-bedroom apartment.

I come to Congress with 3 decades as a small businessowner. Small business owners know our workers are our customers, our neighbors, and our community members.

When workers have more money in their pockets, they have more money to spend to care for their families and stimulate our economy.

This is especially true in rural areas, where workers have only a handful of employment options. If the primary employer in a rural town is a multibillion-dollar corporation like Walmart, they can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour instead of holding down wages for the entire community.

Congress recently set a new record for the longest stretch in U.S. history without a hike in the minimum wage: 10 years. It is long past due that we show workers respect by putting more money in their pockets and support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from the United Food and Commercial Workers. UFCW, Washington, DC, July 15, 2019. To All Members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Dear Representative: On behalf of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) which represents more than 1.3 million hard-working Americans in food and non-food retail, pharmacy, food processing, and manufacturing, I urge you to vote for the Raise the Wage Act (H.R. 582) and vote against any amendments that would weaken the bill. UFCW will be scoring this vote.

The Raise the Wage Act will raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.55 this year and gradually increase it over the next five years until it reaches $15 an hour in 2024. After 2024, the minimum wage will be indexed so that it continues to rise along with a typical workers wage. The Raise the Wage Act will also end unfair exclusions for tipped workers, people with disabilities, and youth so that they, too, can benefit from a decent minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage will be good for the economy and stimulate consumer spending. Today's low-wage workers earn less per hour than their counterparts did 50 years ago but productivity has nearly doubled in that time. If the minimum wage had been raised at the same pace as productivity growth, it would be over $20 an hour today. Increasing the minimum wage would generate $144 billion in additional wages and most of those extra earnings would be spent in grocery stores and other main street businesses because lower-paid workers spend a greater proportion of their earnings.

The Raise the Wage Act would deliver long-overdue raises to a large segment of the workforce. Gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers--26.6 percent of the U.S. workforce. A $15 minimum wage would begin to reverse decades of pay inequality between the lowest-paid workers and the middle class.

Raising the minimum wage would significantly benefit workers of color and women. Nearly two-fifths (38 percent) of African Americans and one-third (33 percent) of Latinos would get a raise and 56 percent of women workers would benefit.

Across the country, there is overwhelming momentum in favor of raising wages for our nation's lowest-wage workers. Since 2014, twenty-one states, plus D.C., have approved minimum wage increases. California, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia have approved raising their minimum wages to $15 an hour and Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Michigan, and Maine have approved minimum wages ranging from $12 to $14.75 an hour.

UFCW opposes a regional minimum wage. Regional minimum wages bake-in low wages to already low-wage places. Rural counties and Southern cities where wages have been depressed for a variety of social, political, and economic reasons would effectively have their low-wage status locked in. The power of the minimum wage to boost worker incomes, and thus consumer buying power, would be legislatively kneecapped for the areas that could most use a boost in local consumer demand.

Raising the minimum wage is long overdue. I call on every member of Congress to vote for the Raise the Wage Act and enact this import piece of legislation as quickly as possible. Sincerely, Ademola Oyefeso, International Vice President, Director, Legislative and Political Action Department.

Ms. FOXX of North Carolina.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source