Elizabeth Furse: “Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to hear people talk about how this was going to be a tax increase. We are some of the…”

“Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to hear people talk about how this was going to be a tax increase. We are some of the few people who actually paid by taxes from the American people, and if we raise the minimum wage to $5.15, the minimum wage people working 40 hours a week would still make less than Members of this House make in 1 month. It is a shame, it is an outrage, that we are not able to get a vote on the minimum wage. That is why I am asking for a vote against the previous question. I should point out that in Oregon, our legislature raised the minimum wage to $4.75, and, since 1992, since Bill Clinton has been in office, our unemployment rate has been halved in Oregon. We are doing very well in Oregon. We presently have an initiative from the people of Oregon to raise the minimum wage in Oregon to $6.50. Yet these people here on this side of the aisle are saying no, we cannot even talk about raising the minimum wage. Seventy-five percent of people living on minimum wage, and let me tell you if you work 40 hours a week, if you lived on minimum wage today, you would make $8,840 a year, 75 percent of those people are women; 75 percent are women. This is anti-women to not allow this vote to be brought to the House floor.”