Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from California for yielding, and, yes, we have a lot of military installations in the Hampton Roads area, and we are very concerned about the present situation in the Middle East. We want to talk about what is going on in the Committee on Education and Labor, and I just want to share a few things that we have been doing over the last year. Comments have been made of what Congress is or is not doing. Well, we have been protecting the income of hardworking Americans by the House passing the Raise the Wage Act, which will gradually increase the Federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2025, giving 33 million workers a raise and lifting over a million people out of poverty. We haven't had an increase in the minimum wage for over a decade. The last minimum wage was over 10 years ago, and inflation has eroded the value of that minimum wage so much to the point where one study concluded that a full-time, 40-hours-a-week, minimum-wage worker cannot afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in any county in the United States. We are not talking about San Francisco or Manhattan. Not a single county in the United States can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. So we voted in the House to increase the minimum wage. The Paycheck Fairness Act addresses pay inequity by holding companies accountable for gender-based wage disparities and protecting a worker's right to challenge systemic pay discrimination.…”