Political Quotes

“What will happen is then, horror of all horror, wages may go up. Let me just touch on that very important point. We hear every day on the television, we hear it on the radio, we read it in the newspapers, that we are living in the midst of one of the great economic booms in our history. Maybe that fear that with low unemployment wages might go up has in fact prompted the Federal Reserve to do what it did today. But I want to, for the Record, Mr. Speaker, give a chart which very clearly belies this nonsense that there is an economic boom for the middle class or for working people. According to information assembled by the Economic Policy Institute, and I do not think there is a lot of debate about this, in 1973 the weekly earnings, the real average weekly earnings of workers in the United States, was $502, okay? In 1973, the weekly earnings, average earnings, were $502. In 1998, in the midst of a great economic boom, the weekly earnings were $442, a 12 percent reduction in real wages. The reality is that in order to compensate for the lowering of real wages, the average American today is working significantly more hours. People are working two jobs, people are working three jobs. So if the Fed thinks that they have got to once again increase unemployment to dampen wage increases, I would have very strong disagreement, because in reality today the average person in the middle class is struggling.”