Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to spend some time on the floor with my distinguished colleague from Texas, though we disagree strongly about this. I would just once again reiterate that the CBO estimate on this is nowhere near 4 million jobs lost. That is not mentioned anywhere in the CBO report. It talks about a range from zero to 3.7 million. The median is 1.3 million. But, again, this is as much a question of values and what we stand for and a moral imperative as it is for statistics, because the statistics would argue for it. 1.3 million Americans would be lifted out of poverty the moment we pass this and this becomes law. Nearly 30 million Americans would see their annual wage increased, in some cases dramatically. And this, as I indicated earlier, makes certain that, as a matter of public policy, we make certain that there is no erosion of the purchasing power of the minimum wage because of the indexing on this. I really feel, Mr. Speaker, that those are the statistics that we ought to be mindful of, not just the worst possible, which is overstated by my colleague and friend. There should be, Mr. Speaker, no place in this great Nation where a minimum wage employee working full-time cannot afford the basic essentials. The work we are doing here today does not dictate a one-size-fits-all model for every State.…”