Hilda L. Solis: “tonight I rise to bring attention to how priorities of our hard-working American families are being crushed under this…”

“tonight I rise to bring attention to how priorities of our hard-working American families are being crushed under this administration's policies. When President Bush first took office, he had a $236 billion budget surplus, there had been 22 million jobs created in the previous 8 years under President Clinton, and this country was experiencing the biggest drop in child poverty in our history. But what has changed in the past 4 years since Bush took office? Well, today there are 8.2 million Americans who are looking for work, and unemployment rates in many parts of our country are at a higher rate, almost 30 percent higher, than they were 4 years ago. And in my district alone, embarrassingly, some rates are as high as 9 percent. Plus, today's job market has lost economic value and too many positions that are being created are only part-time. What this administration has not said when it talks about jobs it has created is that 90 percent of these new jobs since August 2003 are in industries that pay an hourly wage that is less than the national average. About 1.3 million of these jobs make an average wage of $15 an hour. That is 40 cents less than the national average. And it is an embarrassment that our own Federal minimum wage has not been increased. Imagine a family trying to survive on making $5.15 an hour, and that wage has not gone up for many years.”