Political Quotes

“I thank my friend for yielding. Let me say to him that I will ask my staff--and they usually do what I ask them to do--next week to sit down with your staff and to talk about the SKILLS Act. We have significant differences. It was passed on a largely partisan vote, as the gentleman knows, but I agree with him. As you know, I have an agenda that we call Make It In America, and it deals with skills, and it deals with a 21st century workforce education, and so the objective we agree upon. I will certainly look forward to working with him on the specifics to see if we can get an agreement, a consensus, so that we can pass a bill which accomplishes those objectives, because we share those objectives. {time} 1145 Let me say, Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, I talk about the minimum wage. The majority leader answers, Mr. Speaker, that yes, the value of wages has decreased, but if we increased the Affordable Care Act to a 40-hour criteria, and less than that, 39 hours, no health care would necessarily be available to those workers, but you would increase their salary by 25 percent. Now on that theory, Mr. Speaker, perhaps if we increased the work to 80 hours a week, we would double their pay. Or perhaps we could triple their pay if you increased it to 120 hours a week. But, very frankly, it has eroded. The minimum wage is not worth what it was, and, very frankly, in 1969, the economy was not going bust. We weren't hemorrhaging jobs. We were doing pretty well.…”