Raising the Federal Minimum Wage

Below is a video and transcript of the speech.

Mr. Speaker,

I rise today to call on my colleagues to join in the effort to pass the Fair Minimum Wage Act and raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Fifty years ago, 200,000 Americans marched on Washington. Appealing to the soul of the nation, Dr. Martin Luther King and his fellow speakers charted out the long journey for equality and justice ahead.

In the pamphlet promoting The March on Washington, they listed 10 specific legislative demands. A number of these demands would go on to become some of the most significant achievements of the federal government in the postwar era:

• Comprehensive civil rights legislation.
• Desegregation of all school districts.
• An end to discrimination in federal housing programs.

It is clear that we have made progress on many of these issues. But for many of us here, the fight for these goals remains unfinished. Let us not forget though that the March on Washington was actually called the March on Washington for jobs and Freedom.

Let us remember #8 on that list of demands: And I quote, “A national minimum wage that will give all Americans a decent standard of living. Government surveys show that anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this,” end of quote.

On whole, the American economy has made tremendous strides in the last half century. Many in this Congress have been benefactors of that growth. But the American worker has been left behind. The $2.00 an hour that Dr. King and his colleagues called for would be nearly $15.00 per hour today when adjusted for inflation. Despite this fact, many of my colleagues will call the demand for a $10.10 federal minimum wage unreasonable. Many will even say this demand for a reasonable wage is rooted in partisan politics. But Mr. Speaker, this reasonable demand is rooted in the belief that American workers deserve more.

President Truman said that minimum wage legislation was quote “founded on the belief that full human dignity requires at least a minimum level of economic sufficiency and security.” The call for a raise in the minimum wage is based on the fact that while a single parent making minimum wage earns $15,080 annually, that is still more than $400 below the federal poverty rate. The call for a raise in the minimum wage is based on the fact that working forty-hour weeks, fifty-two weeks a year, that parent still struggles to feed their family. Think about that during your next vacation. The call for a raise in the minimum wage is based on the fact that a single parent is overwhelmingly likely to be a single mother. Because while women make up 47 percent of our workforce, they represent nearly two-thirds of minimum wage earners.

And finally the call for a raise in the minimum wage is based on good economics. I know full well that those opposed to a raise in the minimum wage say that any raise will reduce employment. And at a certain point it could. But a modest raise to $10.10 an hour is nowhere near this theoretical tipping point. And more than six dozen economists agree. In a recent letter to Congress, they explicitly said “increases in the minimum wage have little or no impact on the employment of minimum wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market.”

The economic recovery has been a very long, slow road for low-wage American workers. And a raise in the minimum wage is the jolt our economy needs. Higher wages quickly turn into increased spending. Increased spending quickly turns into growth. But minimum wage legislation, like unemployment insurance, is merely the minimum we should be doing for the American worker.

Let’s remember that during the March on Washington the demand directly preceding the call for an increase in minimum wage was Demand #7: “A massive federal program to train and place…workers…on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.”

This body needs to turn its focus on advancing legislation that will create more American jobs and policies that matter to American workers. I urge my colleagues to support the American worker. Join me in calling for jobs legislation and a reasonable raise of the federal minimum wage.