John Sarbanes: “I appreciate it. So in the past, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, we have increased the minimum wage.…”

“I appreciate it. So in the past, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, we have increased the minimum wage. We usually have argued about how much to increase it and when to make it effective, and that usually has been the limit of the debate. Now we are confronted with a situation in which there is an effort to increase it, which, by every survey, commands overwhelming support amongst the American people, and then we are confronted with, as it were, the subterfuges which will erode the meaning of the extension in the minimum wage. The provision that I made reference to of a 180-day period at the old wage for everyone, regardless of age, and for the exclusion from coverage of this increase in the minimum wage of any business with revenues of under $500,000 a year, many of the workers of such businesses are today covered under the minimum wage law. But by the provisions of the amendment to be offered by my Republican colleagues, they would then be excluded. It ought not to be necessary to go through the really heart-rending stories of people trying to make it on a minimum wage in order to see the decency of enacting this modest increase. Forty percent of those at minimum wage salaries are single parents trying to support their children. At a minimum wage today they have a year-round income of $8,500. This places them well below the poverty level.…”