Duncan Faircloth: “the private sector and the free market are the only factors that can determine what is a proper wage. Governments around…”

“the private sector and the free market are the only factors that can determine what is a proper wage. Governments around the world have discovered the futility and waste associated with manipulating wages and markets. It simply has never worked. Yet, the U.S. Congress today and every year since 1931 has mandated that the Department of Labor somehow determine the proper wage that should be paid for 300 different job categories in 20,000 different locations around the country. Every bricklayer, backhoe operator, carpenter, electrician and post-hole digger has to get a correct Federal unionized wage. This wage is to be determined not by the real market but by the bureaucrats in Washington. That, Mr. President, is an impossible task. Everyone knows the Labor Department cannot possibly do the job, and for the past 63 years, the prevailing wage has been one thing and one thing only: the union wage. That is why in places like Cody, WY, they use a Denver pay scale, and in Poplar Bluff, MO, they use St. Louis union pay scales. This goes on all over the country. Anyone with a drop of common sense knows there is not any connection between the selected wage and the true local market wage. The local market is really of no consequence. The union wage simply prevails and the Davis-Bacon wage goes on. The second loser is the private sector. The cost to the private sector in lost competition is enormous.”