Burgess Owens: “the working families of this Nation are still being trampled on by this 106th Congress. They are being grossly…”

“the working families of this Nation are still being trampled on by this 106th Congress. They are being grossly mistreated in two basic ways: One is indifference and neglect on certain key issues, and the other is active oppression in certain ways. Indifference and neglect is reflected in the fact that we are not concerned about a minimum wage increase. There is a rumor that the leadership of the majority party has decided that it will agree to a minimum wage vote and that it will take place sometime later rather than sooner, and they are delaying because they want to make sure we get close to the election and be able to say, well, we voted for a minimum wage, or we allowed it on the floor and let the Democrats vote for it, so we did our job. And, of course, there is a rumor also that the minimum wage being proposed by the majority is 25 cents a year for the next 4 years. An increase of 25 cents per year for the next 4 years means in 4 years the American worker would have a dollar increase instead of the two-step increase being proposed by the Democrats. But there is no hurry. We have an unprecedented prosperity in the Nation. We have a situation where the value of the stock market in 10 years has grown by $10 trillion. We had the assets and the value of the stock market in 1989 at $3 trillion. Now it is $13 trillion.”