Pete Sessions: “we want higher wages for American workers. This is important. I would like to see them receive $15, $20, $30 an hour…”

“we want higher wages for American workers. This is important. I would like to see them receive $15, $20, $30 an hour, not $7 an hour. I would like to create economic forces to work so the average worker can benefit from that without some sort of Government wage control. I have voted for minimum wage increases. We are going to move this bill forward, as I understand it, with a package of relief provisions for small businesses, and it will be passed. But we are not through yet with some relevant, important amendments. Is that what my colleagues object to? They certainly did not object to it when the Republicans were moving bills through the Senate last year or the year before. Senator Kennedy can file a stack of amendments 2 feet thick if he desires. There is nothing wrong with offering some amendments, and we will move forward. I will say a couple of things about it. We had amendments in the Senate almost every year in recent years--3, 4, 5 years--that would have raised the minimum wage and would have provided relief for small business. But the Democratic leadership, to make a political point, preferred not to have that and blocked that provision, voting only for their pure increase of the minimum wage.”