The Minimum Wage

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I am proud to stand here today to support raising the minimum wage. No person in America should work full time and not earn enough to be above the poverty level. The poverty level in the United States in 2014 is about $23,000 for a family of four. Today, if someone works under the minimum wage for 40 hours a week they are still in poverty. No one should work 40 hours a week and be given a salary that does not lift them and their families out of poverty. That is absolutely wrong.

Millions of people in our country have been trying to climb into the middle class. But no matter how hard they work, they are stuck in the same place.

In America today, nearly half of those who grow up in families in the bottom fifth of income earners will stay there as adults. Tens of millions of Americans labor tirelessly for years to scale the economic ladder but they can never get off the ground. That is unacceptable, it is immoral, and that needs to change.

Raising the minimum wage is a first step to fighting income inequality in our country. We must help restore the dignity and the value of work and help millions of families escape poverty by increasing the national minimum wage.

Today, more than 46 million Americans are living in poverty. The average American household made less in 2012 than it did in 1989. That is wrong. It is plain wrong. Over these last 20 years, the top 1 percent of wage earners in America has seen their income skyrocket by 86 percent. In the years ahead it is going to get worse for those making the minimum wage. Over the next 5 years the real value of the minimum wage is projected to decline by 10 percent or over $1,400 of purchasing power for a full-time worker, unless we increase the minimum wage.

What does that mean? It means Americans will be able to buy less if we don't do it, and it will be harder for families to get by. The poor will effectively get even more impoverished. Even as they are working 40 hours a week, they get poorer and poorer and poorer because that minimum wage does not buy as much as it did the year before and the year before and the year before. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is the system we have right now unless we take action to make sure those who earn the minimum wage are keeping pace with what it takes to buy the food, to pay the rent, to pay for the schools for the children in their family. If we don't do this, they get poorer and poorer while continuing to work 40 hours a week.

We know low-income Americans would benefit from raising the minimum wage, but they are not the only ones. Hundreds of small businesses in my home State of Massachusetts have signed on to a petition for a fair minimum wage of $10.50 per hour. That petition says that raising the minimum wage makes good business sense. That same small business petition says workers are also customers.

They are right. Increasing the purchasing power of minimum-wage workers helps stimulate the economy. Research has shown time and time again that minimum-wage workers spend the additional income they receive when the minimum wage is increased. If we increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, 28 million workers would receive about $35 billion in additional wages.

Raising the minimum wage does not cause job losses, even during periods of recession. Most minimum-wage workers need the income to make ends meet and spend it quickly. It goes right into the economy. So economists believe it will actually boost the economy by creating about 85,000 new jobs and increasing economic activity by about $22 billion. That means everyone in our economy should be on board.

Raising the minimum wage is about giving families security, opportunity, and dignity--the security to know they can make ends meet, the opportunity to climb out of poverty and into the middle class, and the dignity to know they are getting paid a fair wage for a hard day's work. That is why I am proud to stand here today to urge my colleagues to increase the minimum wage so that we give America the raise it needs for those who are working so hard for our economy.

I yield the floor.

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