Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being recognized. I bring this amendment to the floor out of a sense of fiscal responsibility and a sense of duty to the people that go out and work hard every day and return a value for every dollar, for every hour they invest, a value returned on production. I have spent my life in the construction industry. We have paid Davis-Bacon wage scales, I believe, in each year that I have been in business, and we were a merit shop operation. So I have both sides of experience to this. I have worked underneath Davis-Bacon wage scales, and I have worked in competition with them. Davis-Bacon is rooted back in the early 1930s. There was a decision made by a couple of people from New York, both Republicans I might add. They let me down then before I was born. They wanted to provide protectionism for their people in New York and lock out minorities that would be coming from the South to build Federal buildings during that era of the Great Depression in New York. It remains the last vestige of Jim Crow laws that's designed to protect and lock out minorities from the construction industry as far as labor is concerned. My records on this is it costs a lot of money to have Davis-Bacon wage scales imposed. And our King Construction records show over the years that there is somewhere between 8 and 38 percent increase in the costs that we have to bid a project when we make the adjustment for Davis-Bacon. According to Beacon Hill, there's a 9 to 37 percent increase.…”