Minimum Wage Fairness Act - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Madam President, we believe that every American who works 40 hours a week deserves a fair shot at getting out of poverty. Under the present minimum-wage law, that doesn't happen. A person can work hard, with pride, as Americans do, and work that 40 hours and still be below the poverty line. That is basically not part of what America is all about, because America says to everybody, If you work hard, you can provide a decent life for yourself and your family. Since the minimum wage has stagnated, that doesn't happen.
Since 1968, the minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation and has lost a third of its value. That is not a fair shot for Americans. A full-time minimum-wage worker makes only about $15,000 a year--not a fair shot for Americans. It is wrong. It flies in the face of the American dream.
Each Senator is allowed one guest at the State of the Union Address. I brought a young woman named Shareeka Elliott. Let me tell my colleagues about her. Shareeka is a cleaner at Kennedy Airport. She scrubs toilets and floors from 10 at night until 6 in the morning. After the overnight shift, she hops on multiple buses each day to take her two daughters to school. They are in different parts of the borough of Brooklyn. Only then is she able to get home and take care of her household. For her hard work, Shareeka is paid $8 an hour--not enough.
When we talk to Shareeka, we find she is a beautiful woman. She is not angry. But do my colleagues know what raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would do for her? Eighty dollars a week. It would allow her to provide her children with the barest of necessities--when kids can't get clothes and can't get a decent meal when they are not in school; when they can't get any toys for Christmas. That is not America.
This woman isn't a freeloader. She is getting on the bus, traveling 2 hours to Kennedy Airport, working many 8 hours from 10 at night until 6 in the morning, getting back on the bus, and then finding two more buses to take care of her children, and she can't make enough money to get out of poverty. What kind of country is this? It is hard to believe, on both the economics issue and the moral issue, that we have opposition from the other side of the aisle to even let this come to a debate.
We know what raising the minimum wage will do for the millions of Shareekas: It gives them a life with some degree of dignity. It gives their children a little more--not a lot--for basic necessities. It pumps money into the economy. I bet most Americans would say that even if it costs me a little more--a nickel more on my hamburger to give people such as Shareeka a decent living--most Americans are generous people and they would say that is fair.
Here are our colleagues. They are back in the 19th century, saying we shouldn't do this. It is hard to believe, when we think of the 1890s and the 1930s, how people struggled to get a decent life, and they didn't think of the beauty of the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and 1980s when people knew if they worked hard, they could at least achieve a decent life. That American dream, symbolized by the lady who holds the statue in the harbor of the city I represent, is flickering out. We have a chance now to have it at least lit up a little more. We say no? What is going on in America?
Our colleagues are saying the economy isn't growing as fast as it should. Yet they don't want to pump money into the economy. Our bill is a win/win. Seventy-three percent of all Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support a $10.10 minimum wage. Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota, told his colleagues to support the wage increase. When we have a few small interest groups holding this back, it is a shame.
I urge my Republican colleagues to look at our economy and then look into their hearts, and I am confident that if they did, they would have a change of heart and let us pass this bill.
I will say one final thing. If we don't succeed this time--we believe strongly in a fair shot for everybody, including those who are paid minimum wage and work hard and long--we will bring this bill to the floor again and again and again, and just as with unemployment insurance, sooner or later we will get it done. We will get it done. The American dream, a fair shot for everyone, demands no less.
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