Political Quotes

“more than 6 months ago, President Clinton came before the Congress and called for a modest increase in America's minimum wage--from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour. And for the past nearly 6 months, 12 million Americans woke up every morning, went to work each day and continued to earn a meager $34 a day--waiting for this Congress to uphold its responsibility to working Americans and raise the minimum wage. Today, their wait is finally over. Today, working Americans are finally getting a break. Americans who were being asked to live on $8,500 a year are receiving a much-needed helping hand from the U.S. Congress. Due to this legislation, minimum wage workers will see an additional $1,800 in their paychecks by the end of the year. Raising the minimum wage will allow millions of America's working families to pay for 7 months of groceries, 1 year of health care costs, or more than a year's tuition at a 2-year college. And today, the nearly one in five minimum wage workers who currently live in poverty will now have a genuine opportunity to make a better life for their children. My only regret is that it took so long to reach this moment. Over the past 6\1/2\ months, my colleagues across the aisle used every possible tool to block this legislation. They claimed that raising the minimum wage would cost jobs--even though study after study shows this to be a fallacious argument.”