Political Quotes

“This is the Davis-Bacon limitation amendment that I believe most Members of this Congress have seen that applies to this appropriations bill. We have an existing code called the Davis-Bacon Act. What it does is it requires that any construction projects that have Federal dollars in them--$2,000 or more--be constructed under what the bill says are prevailing wages. While prevailing wages in 1931 might have been a legitimate evaluation, today, it's a federally mandated union scale determined by a formerly smoke-filled room of people from the administrative side and the construction side of the industry. I've spent my life in the construction business. I've been involved in the construction business since 1970, and I've worked on all sides of this that I can imagine. I've been a recipient of Davis-Bacon wages; I've paid Davis-Bacon wages; and I've done a fair amount of reporting of those wages into the bureaucrats. This law is the last remaining Jim Crow law in the U.S. Code. It was written to protect union workers in New York City from the southern African Americans who were brought up to do a Federal building in that city back during the Depression. {time} 2100 And in 1931 there was a Senator James Davis of Pennsylvania and Representative Robert Bacon of New York, Long Island, who, I might add, decided that they wanted to protect the unions in that locale, and so they brought this legislation to Congress and passed it.…”