Tom Tancredo: “Mr. Speaker, what we are contemplating here in changing the minimum wage is in one sense I think unacceptable. I have…”

“Mr. Speaker, what we are contemplating here in changing the minimum wage is in one sense I think unacceptable. I have already expressed my concerns about doing this audacious thing to believe for just a moment, even a second, that we in this body know what is the right amount of money to pay anybody for anything for any job that they do, but now we are contemplating doing even more damage by reducing the number of years in which this would occur. Increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $5.65 or $6.15 an hour over 2 years, as has been proposed, would be unparalleled. It would amount to a 44.7 percent increase in the minimum wage, or $1.90 per hour since 1996, when the minimum wage was $4.25. Congress has never raised the minimum wage by more than $1.05 per hour over a 5-year period, and that $1.05 an hour hike occurred between 1978 and 1982, when inflation was increasing by an average of 9.8 percent per year, far more than the 2.5 percent average rate over the last 5 years. Now, these are facts. These are economic facts. But I do not expect them to carry today.”