Bob Wise: “let me just say hallelujah, because when this Congress started a year and a half ago, I would not have predicted this…”

“let me just say hallelujah, because when this Congress started a year and a half ago, I would not have predicted this day. There are a lot of things that I would have predicted would have happened in this session of Congress, but an increase in the minimum wage, the first legislated increase since 1989, I would not have predicted. The good news is that miracles do happen. The good news is that those who say that they are going to fight a minimum wage increase with every fiber of their being can often be proved wrong. This is a very important day for West Virginians as well as Americans. There are 112,000 payroll jobs in West Virginia that will see an increase because of this minimum wage increase, going from $4.25 to $5.15. That is roughly 17 percent of the payroll jobs in our State. It means that the delay that people have been facing, in which $2 million a week in payroll has been lost because there has not been a minimum wage increase, that will no longer take place.”