Jack Kingston: “When I was earning the minimum wage and my fellow workers were earning the minimum wage, we never, never once thought…”

“When I was earning the minimum wage and my fellow workers were earning the minimum wage, we never, never once thought about writing our Congressman to get a raise. What we thought about doing was working a little bit harder, staying a little bit longer, getting the job done a little bit faster, and there through the capitalist system, we got paid. It is too bad that our friends on the other side of the aisle seem to hate capitalism and seem to hate and have a true contemptuousness for free enterprise. But let me tell you, now some of them are very shrewd, and here is why. One other component that is missing from this debate is the fact that many States, such as Hawaii, such as New Jersey, have a State minimum wage already that is higher than the existing Federal minimum wage. The Federal minimum wage is $4.15 an hour. Hawaii's minimum wage, State minimum wage, is $5.25, and New Jersey's is $5.05. What is happening, when businesses are looking to move a plant to Hawaii or to New Jersey, they say, ``Well, that entry level salary is a little bit high, I think I can do better moving to another State,'' and then New Jersey is losing them. So what happens is we have got these States saying, ``Yes, we need to increase the minimum wage because we are at a competitive economic disadvantage because of our own State's policies.'' We are not hearing that in here, so this is not altruistic. We need to get the cards face up on the table about that.”