Political Quotes

“As I indicated, this amendment essentially says that the prevailing wage provisions in the underlying bill should be tightened to ensure that they apply to all workers and not just some workers. The way the underlying bill is currently structured, essentially those workers who fall outside of Davis-Bacon projects or collective bargaining agreements or other provisions are not going to be covered. That could be 25 million workers or so which could be subject to competition from guest workers, even though they are prepared to take the jobs that the employers are offering, if they were offered at a prevailing wage. My hope would be that we can work out whatever disagreements there are on the other side. This is a mechanism to ensure that the guest worker program is not used to undercut American workers and to put downward pressure on the wages of American workers. Everybody in this Chamber has agreed that if we are going to have a guest worker program, it should only be made available where there is a genuine need that has been shown by the employers that American workers are not available for those jobs. Without this amendment, that will not be the case, and we will have a situation in which we have guest workers who are taking jobs that Americans are prepared to take, if, in fact, prevailing wages were provided for.…”