OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

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Floor Speech

Date: April 4, 2025
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2126 and ask that it be reported by number.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this amendment is simple and straightforward. Millions of Americans today are working for starvation wages. What this amendment does is raise the Federal minimum wage from an embarrassingly low $7.25 an hour to a living wage of $17 an hour over a period of 5 years. In other words, 5 years from now, everybody in America would make at least $17 an hour. That is not a radical idea.

Quite unbelievably, the average American worker today makes $42 a week less than he or she did 52 years ago. Almost all of the new wealth that has been created has gone to the top 1 percent--a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the people on top.

It has been 16 years--16 years--since the Federal minimum wage has been raised.

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Mr. SANDERS. Now is the time to address the crises facing working Americans.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote.
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