Wednesday January 10, 2007

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Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to rise today in support of this increase in the minimum wage. We should all be a bit ashamed of the fact that it has been 10 years since we have had the last increase. Every year low-wage workers are left behind while CEOs get more and more money. This is not some valid exercise of a well-oiled free enterprise system. This is a disgrace, and most Americans are repulsed by that fact.

Some people here are trying to make the case today that there is some benefit of a full-time worker making $10,700 a year, leaving a family of three $6,000 below the poverty level. There can be no benefit, Mr. Speaker, in that condition.

Let us be clear. Raising the minimum wage is going to dramatically improve the lives of millions of Americans, whether Milton Friedman agrees or not. When you make $4,400 more a year than you made in the past year, full-time year-round workers with a family of three can afford a year's worth of groceries. They can afford 1 1/2 years of heat and electricity. They can afford 9 months of rent, and they can afford the full 2-year tuition for a community college degree for a parent or a child. That is how we get Americans on the prosperity ladder. That is how we give them opportunity.

There are those that argue that the increase in the minimum wage is going to hurt the economy. I suggest that that is not true at all and that rhetoric doesn't comport with reality. 650 economists say otherwise; reality says otherwise. The fact of the matter is that the Fiscal Policy Institute reports that States with a higher minimum wage than that have added jobs to the retail industry.

We have to move in the right direction with this bill.