Political Quotes

“I would like to refute the gentleman's last point, especially. I worked for 18 years as an ironworker. I've worked not only in the Massachusetts area, but New York, New Mexico, Louisiana. I worked in Indiana. I worked at a lot of the steel mills. I worked a lot of jobs where Davis-Bacon has been in effect. What Davis-Bacon does--and the gentleman's amendment would provide-- that none of the funds made available to this bill will be available to administer the wage rate requirements of chapter 31 of title 40, which is the Davis-Bacon Act. What Davis-Bacon was meant to do is to prevent the wages in any area of the country and every area of the country from being depressed by bringing in low-wage workers. This was the practice back before the prevailing wage, before Davis-Bacon was in effect. You would have large construction projects, but you'd have unscrupulous contractors who would pay very low wages to their employees, and they would move into an area where the cost of living required those workers to get a decent wage. And what will happen now if we repeal Davis-Bacon, which is a very, very bad idea, not only for the gentleman's district but every State in the Union, is we will get one group of very low-paid workers, and they will be like locusts. They will go into areas, whether it be Houston, whether it be down in Texas or Louisiana or in the Northeast, we will have low-wage workers go in there and undercut the wages of the workers in those areas.…”