Political Quotes

“This is the Davis-Bacon Act amendment. And for everyone's information, Mr. Chairman, it's this: The Davis-Bacon Act was an act that was signed into law on or about 1932. It was generated in New York to lock the African Americans out of the construction trades in New York. It is the last remaining vestige of Jim Crow laws in America. It's a union protection law. What it says is that any Federal construction project with 2,000 or more dollars involved in it must meet these Federal prevailing wage standards. We know--and I've spent 28-plus years as a founder and owner of a construction company and a number of years prior to that. I'm over 30 years in the construction business, Mr. Chairman. We know this amounts to a union-imposed wage scale and federally controlled wage prices. What it does is it increases the cost of our construction projects. Our records over the years show that someplace between 8 percent and 35 percent is the increase with the Davis-Bacon wage scale as opposed to competition setting those wages. Some of the charts here that I'm looking at show between 9 percent and 37 percent. I just use the number 20 percent more. Our project costs us 20 percent more because of this federally imposed wage scale that's unnecessary, and it cuts out competition. You can make the decision, then, on whether we want to build 4 miles of road or 5, whether we want to build, Mr.…”