Burgess Owens: “An enlightened employer would know that paying the minimum wage helps the economy as a whole. These are very poor people…”

“An enlightened employer would know that paying the minimum wage helps the economy as a whole. These are very poor people and every dollar they make they are going to spend in this economy. They are not like the CEO's, who make millions of dollars and travel around the world spending their money somewhere else. An enlightened employer would know that the effort we made in the last Congress to pass health care legislation would greatly help them in their woes. They would not have to moan so much if we had a health care plan which took care of everybody's health care. We did not ask for a minimum wage 2 years ago because we were concentrating on a universal health care plan, which meant that the poorest person would also be able to have a health care plan and maybe he would not need an increase in the minimum wage. Here is an opportunity where you might have helped yourself and helped the Government and helped the people who work for you if you had supported a health care plan. But most employees are not enlightened. they can only see tunnel vision, and we need to give them some help in understanding how the economy really works in the rest of the world. The economy works for everybody. The workers at the lowest level----”