Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, my amendment is an amendment that I have brought in past years. What it does, it says none of the funds made available by this act, including the amendments made by this act, may be used to implement, administer, or enforce a prevailing rate of wage requirements in subchapter 4, which is basically referred to normally as the Davis-Bacon Act. The Davis-Bacon Act is a bill that was passed back in the early 1930s. The purpose of it was to lock the labor out from Alabama that was going, during the Depression years, up into New York to build Federal buildings and competing with the labor unions up there that happened to be locking Black workers out of the workforce in New York. It was brought to us by a Senator and by a House Member from New York-- both Republicans, by the way. It is the remaining Jim Crow law that I know of on the books, and it imposes what is called a prevailing wage on all contractors doing Federal contracts that are $2,000 or more. King Construction has been in business since 1975. That is 41 years. We have dealt with this Davis-Bacon wage scale for a long time. Not only is it expensive, and it costs the taxpayers extra money on every single project on which it is imposed, but it also brings about inefficiencies that are brought about because of the reporting requirements, the confusion that is there.…”