Minimum Wage Fairness Act -- Motion to Proceed -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I think many of my colleagues feel very at home with this image, which is a reminder of a household name--Ramona and her father. It is a great story written by Beverly Cleary. In fact, it is a prize-winning story, part of a series, and my favorite of the series, Ramona the Pest, was written in 1968.

In 1968 and in this story Ramona's dad is struggling, along with his wife Dorothy--his name is Robert--to get by and keep the family together on a minimum wage job, which in 1968 paid $1.60 an hour. Today the minimum wage, if it had kept pace with inflation, would be $10.71 an hour.

We know, many of us--and probably many of my colleagues who have read this story--that Robert and Dorothy Quimby are engaged in a quiet struggle to make ends meet. Even as Ramona is engaged in all kinds of antics and play, he is working as a grocery bagger at a local store. Ramona's mother is working too--an early example of a two-family household and two-income family. They are able to keep their family afloat on that minimum wage in 1968--$1.60 an hour in 1968.

For millions of Americans who read Ramona's story today, the idea of a minimum wage enabling a family to stay afloat, keep a roof over their heads, and food on the table is a storybook fiction. It is very difficult today to believe that Robert Quimby, as a bagger in a grocery store, could enable his daughters, Ramona and her sister, to have the life they did then. In fact, it would be impossible because today the minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation. The minimum wage today is $7.25--nowhere near what it would need to be to keep pace with the rise in the cost of living.

That is why we are here today--to raise the minimum wage to $10.10, which is still below the $10.71 it would have been for Robert Quimby, making minimum wage in a grocery store, if it had kept pace with inflation. In fact, it is well below what is necessary to enable families to continue a normal life. That is why they are living in poverty--working men and women living in poverty--despite being paid the minimum wage. That is a travesty and a mockery. It is a moral outrage. It is bad for our economy, it is bad for our families, it is bad for the fabric of our society, and it is bad for America.

I am proud to support an increase in the minimum wage. I am proud Connecticut has decided it will raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour--still below that $10.71 that is needed to get by today.

We know the impact on families. We know the impact on children. We see them in our schools--millions of children, 14 million children--in families who are paid less than a minimum wage. We know the impact on our veterans. Half a million or more are paid less than the new minimum wage our bill would establish. That is itself an outrage. Men and women who have served and sacrificed for our country come back to civilian life to be paid less than what they need to stay out of poverty. They are working and working hard but still making less than a minimum wage. These are veterans who have served our country, who have put their lives on the line, have put themselves at risk, coming back to a society that rewards them--rewards them--with less than what they need to survive.

I have talked to a lot of businesspeople. Some of them are apprehensive, no question about it, but a lot of them say: Our workers are more productive because we pay well above the minimum wage.

Many who will be impacted by this law if it is passed say it is the right thing to do, and they support it. I am talking about, for example, Max Kothari. For 25 years he, along with his wife Parul, has owned and operated Star Hardware in Hartford--one of the oldest hardware stores in the State of Connecticut. He supports this measure to raise the minimum wage to $10.10.

So does Doug Wade, who operates one of the oldest dairy companies in the State, started by Doug's great-grandfather in 1893--Wade's Dairy in Bridgeport. He supports raising the minimum wage.

A thousand businesspeople have signed a statement and petition--we mentioned it this morning--that supports raising the minimum wage. They say it is a fairness issue. It is simply a way to give folks a fair shot at the American dream, a fair shot at a quality of life that is good for their families and children, good for our society, and, by the way, also good for our economy.

We know that $35 billion would be added to consumer demand because folks who make minimum wage, if it is raised to $10.10, are not going to put the difference under their mattresses. They are going to spend it. They are going to buy more food, clothing, and gas for their cars. They are going to buy things that drive the economy. They are going to purchase stuff that creates demand and more jobs and business for Max Kothari at his hardware store and for Dough Wade at his dairy.

This kind of reasoning is not advanced economic theory; it is basic common sense. Americans understand it. That is why Americans support raising the minimum wage as a matter of fairness and enlightened self-interest economically. It is the right thing to do.

The arguments made against it are without basis rationally and economically. The ones who suffer from the minimum wage as it exists right now are not teenagers. I know there is a myth that they are part-time workers or teenagers. That is just not true. Nearly ninety percent of minimum wage workers are adults. They are disproportionately women and people of color and workers with disabilities, and they will be helped disproportionately by raising the minimum wage. But they are not teenagers or part-time workers. They are deserving, for the hard work they do, of fair pay and a fair shot. That is all the minimum wage would really do, is give them a fair shot at economic opportunity.

And those veterans, they deserve more than a fair shot. They deserve a hand up, not a handout. There is nothing about the minimum wage that is an entitlement. It is simply fair pay and a fair shot. We have trapped half a million of those veterans in poverty--3,800 veterans in Connecticut alone who will benefit from the $10.10 minimum wage.

But we should guarantee that in this great land--the greatest in the history of the world--people such as Ramona's dad, Robert Quimby, and Dorothy Quimby and her sister are being paid at least what they were getting back in 1968 in today's dollars. That is the way to keep families together. That is the way to keep faith with the dream all Americans have that they will have a fair shot.

No one who works full time should live in poverty. No one who works should be so poor that they can't put food on the table or provide clothes for their children, or give them the erasers that Robert Quimby gave his daughters as a gift.

To enable 14 million children in America to have a better life, let's pass this measure. And let's make sure that if it fails this week--and it shouldn't, but if it does, we bring it back, and we continue to bring it back as long as necessary to ensure a fair shot for all Americans who work hard and play by the rules.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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