We are going to keep listening and watching, as time goes by, so we achieve our goal of keeping people working--while making sure they earn a decent, fair, and dignified wage to support themselves and their families.

After three increments of 50-cent increases to minimum wages in American Samoa, a cannery that once employed over 2,000 people closed.

I think it is an interesting observation that maybe American Samoa is a good micro example in terms of bringing this to the national forum as far as the minimum wage issue is concerned.

It is still not enough. It is not what I call a dignified wage.

I continue to be supportive of our tuna cannery workers being re-trained to become nurses, teachers, or whatever else they might want to be because I believe in their future and the future of American Samoa.

It is also my recommendation that we establish one minimum wage rate for American Samoa, rather than the 18 different industry rates to which we are needlessly subjected.

The history of minimum wage in American Samoa is not pretty.

I am very sorry and I apologize that our officials in the Northern Mariana Islands who went to bed with people like Jack Abramoff...

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Certainly it is always a welcome sight to see Secretary Babauta and also Dr. Gootnick here from GAO.

Reports are proved to be false.

Raising the minimum wage is one way to accomplish that goal.

How much does our government expect us to suffer until we have to stand up for our survival?

whether North or South, East or West, there [is] a standard of American living, and we ought to recognize that and fix a minimum wage upon that basis.

Our Territory of the United States, American Samoa, needs some advice from this Subcommittee and from this Congress.

I am going to lean very heavily on Secretary Babauta and the Secretary of the Interior for assistance.

I am appreciative of what the U.S. Congress has done, and continues to do, for us and, once more, I ask for your support to halt further increases for 2012.

Minimum wage policy needs to be our concern here in Congress, however.

The gross sales of these canneries were well over $100 billion in gross sales, and for that period of time, the people were being paid $2 an hour, $3 hour an hour for this 50-year period.