Elijah Lewis: “how can these mean-spirited Republicans, too cheap to pay a worker $5.15 an hour, claim they care about American…”

“how can these mean-spirited Republicans, too cheap to pay a worker $5.15 an hour, claim they care about American workers? This is not a Third World country. We do not tolerate sweatshops in America. We do not have slave labor, starvation wages. This is 1996. It is the dawn of the 21st century. Radical Republicans would take us back to the 19th century, no minimum wage, no support for working families, for those who work hard, play by the rules, and strive to improve the lives of their families, their children. Republicans give tax breaks to corporate bigwigs who make millions of dollars each year, but they think that 9-to-5 workers are overpaid. They think $8,000 a year is too much. This is not just extreme, it is nuts, it is downright crazy. Extreme, mean-spirited Republicans offer the American people a simple choice: Do we live in the 21st century or the 19th century; do we pay livable wages or starvation wages? I say, my colleagues, it is time to stand up to these right-wing extremists, to stand up for hard-working American families. It is time to raise the minimum wage, not repeal it. We cannot go back. We must not go back. We will not go back. Defeat this rule.”