Minimum Wage
MINIMUM WAGE -- (House of Representatives - June 20, 2006)
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for holding this Special Order tonight on the minimum wage.
We are not the only ones that are up at this hour and doing our work. There are millions of Americans around the country who are working. Some of them are working in all-night diners serving people food, maybe taking care of a crying baby right now for someone else, maybe cleaning up after some elderly person, and many of them are doing that just to try and make ends meet and really aren't because they make the minimum wage, about 7 million hard-working people, and anybody who thinks a minimum wage worker doesn't work hard hasn't done a minimum-wage job. Sixty percent are women; many are the heads of households and have children themselves that they have a hard time buying food for or providing health care for.
In fact, a lot of those people who often are held in some contempt when they go to the store with food stamps, and who feel some embarrassment they have to come to get help from the government, put their hand out for assistance, and who are we really helping? We are helping the employers. We are subsidizing those employers with taxpayer dollars who don't pay a living wage or even close to a living wage to many of those workers.
Today the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a study entitled ``Buying Power of Minimum Wage at 51-Year Low.'' The title tells it all. It has been 10 years since the Congress voted to raise the minimum wage and nearly 9 years since its implementation. If we don't act this year, it will be the longest period of inaction and stagnation since the minimum wage was created.
I know we have limited time, but I wanted to make a couple of points about what it really means to be on the minimum wage.
According to a New York Times article reporting on a recent study by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, last year was the first year on record that a full-time worker making minimum wage could not afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country. Anywhere in the country. Over the past 9 years, the minimum wage has not increased, but average rents have gone up more than 28 percent. In Illinois where I live, you need to make $15.44 an hour. In Chicago, you need to make $17.44 an hour in order to pay a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. That is three times the minimum wage.
In the 9 years that minimum wage hasn't increased, average health care premiums have risen over 75 percent. What hasn't risen? Everything has risen. All of the basics have risen, but the minimum wage has not. It is just shameful. Here we are talking about tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, talking about eliminating the estate tax for the Paris Hiltons of our country, and minimum-wage workers, people working right now at this late hour, make $5.15 an hour. We should all be ashamed.
We can do that right away. We could do it tomorrow. We could raise the minimum wage and provide some level of dignity and relief for hard-working Americans, and we should do that.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to speak on this.
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