Minimum Wage Fairness Act -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I rise today to address the idea of raising the Federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. But first I wish to spend a few moments talking about the state of the Senate and why the latest push for a higher Federal minimum wage isn't an issue that appears to be driven by solving the underlying economic problems our Nation faces.

Over the past few weeks, the Senate majority leader has relished in making personal attacks on two private citizens, David and Charles Koch, on this Senate floor. He has used the Senate floor for the purpose of attempting to assassinate their character. They have committed no crimes, although the majority leader appears to treat it as a crime that they don't support him politically. Many political observers can see this for exactly what it is: a desperate political strategy designed to distract from the economic misery that is being visited on the American people by a failed economic agenda. The Senate majority leader is using the Senate floor to run a political campaign against entrepreneurs and philanthropists who have dared to stand and speak out against the failed Obama economic agenda. The reason he is doing so should not surprise anyone. On substance, the record of this administration cannot be defended. They can't talk about how great ObamaCare is working because millions of Americans have lost their health insurance plans and lost the doctors they like, despite the President's repeated promises to the contrary. Health insurance plans have skyrocketed in States all across this country, especially for young people in the individual market who are seeing their rates sometimes double or triple. And they certainly can't talk about the state of the economy.

Today, we have the lowest labor force participation since 1978. The official unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, but that doesn't capture the millions who are underemployed. When we include them, the number rises to 12.7 percent. The rates of poverty in the United States are right now at historic highs--15 percent. As CNN recently noted, this is ``the first time the poverty rate has remained at or above 15 percent 3 years running since 1965.''

Among full-time workers, there are more than 3.8 million fewer employed today than there were before the recession. The number of people not in the labor force today is at its highest level since 1978. Over 91 million people are not in the American workforce. Roughly three of five working-age Americans have jobs today. This is a travesty. It is a denial of the American dream to millions of people across this country.

Long-term unemployment persists. Nearly 36 percent of the unemployed are long-term unemployed. When President Obama took office, the average number of weeks that an individual was unemployed was 19.8. Today, the average duration is 35.6 weeks.

It is also a good thing the President has begun to talk about income inequality. It is a good thing because income inequality has increased dramatically under President Obama. Today, the top 1 percent in our economy earn a higher share of our income than any year since 1928, and those who are being hurt the most in the Obama economy are the most vulnerable among us--the people who are struggling. The working class Hispanics, African Americans, and single moms are the ones paying the price for the great stagnation in which we find ourselves.

According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as middle or upper class fell 8 points between 2008 and 2012. President Obama's terrible economy doesn't discriminate. It hurts Americans from every demographic. On the President's watch, women have lower incomes today. The median income for women has dropped by $733 since President Obama took office, and, indeed, poverty among women has gone up markedly under President Obama. The poverty rate for women has increased from 14.4 percent when the President took office to 16.3 percent. In real terms, that means 3.7 million more American women are in poverty today than when the President took office.

The President is not responding to any of this. Instead, we see the President, we see the Senate majority leader shifting to the topic of a mandated Federal minimum wage in an effort to change the subject. But the undeniable reality, the undeniable truth is that if the President succeeded in raising the minimum wage, it would cost jobs for the most vulnerable. The people who have been hurt by this Obama economy would be hurt worse by the minimum wage proposal before this body.

In 2013, the President, in his State of the Union address, proposed raising the minimum wage to $9. A year later, the request has magically changed to $10.10. There is no economic justification. The only reason is politics. I suppose if the approval ratings of Democratic Members of this body continue to fall, in another month we will see a proposal for $15 an hour and then maybe $20 or $25 an hour.

But I think the American people are tired of empty political show votes.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that raising the minimum wage could cause the loss of 500,000 to 1 million jobs. I want the American people to realize, and every Member of this Senate, that votes for the minimum wage is voting to tell up to 1 million Americans: Your jobs don't matter to me because I am voting to take away your job.

By the way, this view is not only the view of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. On March 12, 2014, over 500 economists, including three Nobel Laureates, sent a letter to Congress that said the minimum wage is a poorly targeted anti-poverty measure. I will give one example from my home State. GO-Burgers, which is a Texas company with six Burger King restaurants, analyzed the effect of the minimum wage increase on their employees and their businesses. The last minimum wage increase we have seen was from $5.85 an hour in 2007 to $7.25 an hour in July of 2009, and 2010 was the first complete calendar year that GO-Burgers had to analyze the impact on their workers. GO-Burgers discovered that raising the minimum wage by 23.93 percent caused these Burger King restaurants to reduce the available hours worked by 24.98 percent, for a net sum loss in hours and wages for the typical employee.

Let me repeat that. The experience in these Burger King restaurants was the employees were worse off after the minimum wage was raised because their hours got cut in direct response to the increase. These six restaurants eliminated over 40 jobs and reduced the average number of hours worked per employee. In total, these six Burger King restaurants reduced the man-hours allocated by over 60,000 hours in 2010. Sadly, the people that bear the brunt of that are not the rich and powerful. They are not those who walk the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and have gotten fat and happy under the Obama administration. The people who would bear the brunt if this bill were passed would be, to a substantial degree, young African American teenagers and young Hispanic teenagers. Right now, young minorities, if we look at unemployment rates by race--just looking at the official unemployment rates, Anglos have an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent; Hispanics, 7.9 percent; African Americans, 12.4 percent--nearly double that in the white community. It is even more heartbreaking among teenagers. White teens currently have an unemployment rate of 18.3 percent, but African American teenagers have an unemployment rate of 36.1 percent--36.1 percent. Every Senator who votes yes is voting with an absolute certainty that hundreds of thousands of workers, including a great many African American teenagers and a great many Hispanic teenagers, will be laid off as a consequence of their vote. I would challenge any of the Senators in this Chamber to look in the eyes of those African American teenagers, those Hispanic teenagers who are looking for a better opportunity.

If my colleagues detect a note of passion in my voice as I discuss this, it is because in my family this is not an abstract, hypothetical situation. Fifty-seven years ago, when my father fled Cuba and came to Texas at the age of 18, penniless, not speaking English, his first job was working in the restaurant industry as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour. The restaurant industry had been such a terrific avenue for climbing the economic ladder, for achieving the American dream. My dad washed dishes at 50 cents an hour to pay his way through college to go on and start a small business to work toward the American dream. If the majority leader had his way, if the minimum wage were jacked up, if back in 1957 the restaurant where my father worked were forced to pay every worker $2 an hour, the odds are very high that restaurant would have fired my dad and bought a dishwasher instead. It was that entry-level job that gave him the grip on the first rung of the economic ladder that led him to pull to the second and the third and the fourth. This bill, if it were to pass, would hammer those on the bottom of the economic ladder and would take away jobs from the most vulnerable among us.

So what should we do instead? We can talk about the problems we have in this country, but we need to talk proactively about better solutions. Fortunately, we are on the cusp of a great American energy renaissance.

I have introduced legislation to remove the barriers to developing the abundant energy resources we have in this country--barriers that, if removed, would allow the creation of millions of high-paying jobs.

The discussion before this Chamber is whether to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. But even if it passed, that is not the Obama minimum wage. Rather, the real Obama minimum wage is $0.00 an hour. We have right now the lowest labor participation rate since 1978.

To the millions of Americans who have lost their job because of $1.7 trillion in new taxes, because of crushing regulations, this is the Obama minimum wage: $0.00--not the political window dressing of $10.10; the reality, the hard, brutal reality.

Last week, I was in Nebraska at a rally. A woman named Barb came up to me. She hugged my neck. She said: Ted, I am a single mom. I have six little kids at home. My husband left me, and he is not paying child support. I am working five jobs, trying to keep my kids fed, trying to keep them with clothes on their backs. Barb had tears in her eyes.

One of the most brutal consequences of ObamaCare is it has forced millions of Americans like Barb into part-time work because the threshold for ObamaCare is 30 hours a week.

So instead of having one or two jobs, Barb and millions of other single moms are going from one job to another, to another, to another, and they are not spending the time with their kids. This is the brutal reality of the Obama minimum wage.

But, Madam President, I am happy to tell you, there is a better alternative. The better alternative, I would note--far better than zero, far better than the promise of $10.10 an hour--is $46.98. Madam President, $46.98--that is the average hourly wage in the oil and gas industry in the State of North Dakota.

Every one of us should want to see millions more jobs at $46.98 an hour, and we should want millions rescued from the Obama minimum wage of $0.00 an hour. That is the choice before this body--of expanding this American energy renaissance, creating opportunity.

Let me tell you, in the State of Texas--Texas is an incredible example--there is a reason why 1,400 people a day are moving to Texas, moving from high-tax, high-regulation States, represented by many of our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle. They are coming to Texas because Texas is where the jobs are and Texas is where the salaries are.

Oil and gas industry jobs in Texas paid, on average, 150 percent more than other private sector jobs in Texas--$128,000 a year compared to $51,000 a year--in 2012.

In the 23 counties atop the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas, average wages for all citizens have grown by 14.6 percent annually since 2005.

The top five counties in the Eagle Ford shale region have experienced an average 63-percent annual rate of wage growth.

How many millions of Americans would love to see 63 percent annual wage growth?

In Texas, the average pay for an entry-level truckdriver ranges from $36,000 to $45,000, but it rises to $50,000 to $70,000 in the oilfield. These are kids straight out of high school making $70,000 a year.

As reported in an AP story from March 28, 2014: ``James LeBas, economist for the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said the industry directly employed 416,000 employees in 2013 and they averaged $120,000 a year in wages.''

As a separate nation, Texas right now would rank as the ninth largest oil-producing country in the world.

Not only can energy development bring good-paying jobs, it can also help our children and schools. Cotulla, TX, was once one of the poorest districts in Texas, but now--because of the Eagle Ford shale energy development--it is one of the richest. The taxes that are coming from the energy development mean money for fixing schools, for hiring teachers, for paying them more, and for purchasing technology in the classrooms.

One thing that is striking is what has happened across the country. If you look, this is a map I have in the Chamber of changes in median household income by county from 2007 to 2012. Madam President, 2007 to 2012 is a long time.

On this map, green indicates that the median household income has gone up; yellow indicates no statistically significant change; and red indicates it has gone down.

Overlaid on this map is an overlay of the geological shale formations in this country. What is striking about looking at median incomes in the United States is where median incomes have gone up. This is almost exactly a geological shale map of the United States.

You can see median incomes have gone up up here in the Bakken shale in and around North Dakota. You can see the Permian Basin shale, the Eagle Ford shale, the Barnett shale. You can see the Marcellus shale. Green, green, green, green--median income going up--for everyone in the county median income going up where energy production is occurring.

Now, strikingly, the Marcellus shale extends north to New York, and yet for the entire State of New York, you can see there is not a county in the State of New York where median income has gone up. Why? Well, one of the main reasons is the Democratic politicians in New York have prohibited developing those natural resources because they ban fracking.

So in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvanians apparently would like jobs, would like higher median incomes. They are seeing the benefits. But in New York, New Yorkers are not because Democratic politicians in New York have prohibited developing those resources.

I would note that one of the most promising areas is the Monterey shale in California--abundant resources--and you would note, in the entire State of California there is not one green county. That is because California, likewise--even though they have those resources, the Democratic politicians there have concluded Californians do not want jobs, they do not want higher incomes, and they are going to prohibit developing their natural resources rather than providing for the very real suffering that is being caused.

I would note, there is one striking exception from this pattern being largely a geological shale formation of this country, and that is the bright green on the map that is located right here where we are standing--the District of Columbia and the surrounding areas.

Let me tell you, it is a good time to be in and around

government. The lobbyists, the consultants, those who make money on the growing and growing and growing Federal Government spending and debt, are getting fatter and happier every day. You look at the rest of the country, and you see stagnation, you see median income falling.

Rather than engaging in political games--driven by polling done by the Democratic Senatorial Committee on this minimum wage bill that, if passed, would only hurt low-income African-American and Hispanic teenagers--instead, we ought to come together with bipartisan unanimity to say: We will stand with the American people to bring millions of jobs. We will stand with the American people to raise median income. We will stand with the American people to make it easier for people who are struggling to achieve the American dream.

Therefore, I have proposed an amendment to replace the text of S. 2223, the minimum wage act, with the text of the American Energy Renaissance Act that I have introduced, S. 2170.

We should all come together and vote on removing the government barriers, opening new Federal lands and resources, developing high-paying, promising jobs that expand opportunity.

In conclusion, let me say this debate comes down to two numbers. It is not a complicated debate. This debate comes down to two numbers. On my left, the real Obama minimum wage: $0.00 an hour. I am sorry to say, in this Democratic Senate, this Chamber is largely empty. There is no discussion of fundamental tax reform or regulatory reform, of removing the barriers that have caused the lowest labor force participation since 1978.

Instead, we are debating a bill to increase unemployment. This minimum-wage bill--the nonpartisan CBO has told us more people would be paid $0.00 an hour under the bill before this Chamber. No wonder Congress's approval rating is 8, 10, 12 percent, when you take the greatest challenge facing Americans right now--the need for economic growth and jobs--and the U.S. Senate in Democratic control will not even talk about providing real relief there. No wonder people are disgusted with the U.S. Congress.

You want to know what this debate is about? Compare $0.00 an hour to $46.98 an hour. I want to see millions of Americans making $40, $50, $60 an hour, providing for their kids, having a better future.

As I travel this country, over and over again, men and women come up to me. They look me in the eyes and say: Ted, I am scared. I am scared that we are bankrupting this country. I am scared that my kids and grandkids are not going to have the future, the opportunity, the freedom we have been blessed to have.

This U.S. Senate has an opportunity to address that. We should pass the American Energy Renaissance Act. We should stop making it harder for working Americans, but, instead, we should come together for jobs and economic growth.

Thank you, Madam President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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