Sean Patrick Maloney: “there is a crisis of fairness in this country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In real…”

“there is a crisis of fairness in this country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In real terms, the minimum wage is at its lowest level in 40 years. Where I come from if one earns the minimum wage and work full-time, they live in extreme poverty. More than 600,000 New Yorkers will benefit from this increase. This is also a woman's issue; 5.7 million women earn the minimum wage. That is 59 percent of all minimum wage earners. Raising the minimum wage promotes families. If we want to encourage work and make it pay, we need to do this for the American people. Unfortunately, it took a Democratic uproar in Congress and 80 percent of the American people to get the Republican Congress to give in and do the right thing. The current minimum wage is indefensible, it discourages work, it demoralizes workers, and it makes a mockery of fairness.”