[Congressional Bills 104th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 1050 Introduced in House (IH)]

  1st Session
                                H. R. 1050

 To establish a living wage, jobs for all policy for the United States 
in order to reduce poverty, inequality, and the undue concentration of 
income, wealth, and power in the United States, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           February 24, 1995

   Mr. Dellums (for himself, Mr. Bonior, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Evans, Mr. 
   Filner, Mr. Hastings of Florida, Mr. Hinchey, Mr. McDermott, Ms. 
 McKinney, Ms. Norton, Mr. Owens, Mr. Payne of New Jersey, Ms. Pelosi, 
 Mr. Rangel, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Towns, and Ms. Velazquez) introduced the 
  following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Economic and 
   Educational Opportunities and, in addition, to the Committees on 
Government Reform and Oversight, the Budget, and Rules, for a period to 
      be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for 
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the 
                          committee concerned

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To establish a living wage, jobs for all policy for the United States 
in order to reduce poverty, inequality, and the undue concentration of 
income, wealth, and power in the United States, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.

    (a) Short Title.--This Act may be cited as the ``A Living Wage, 
Jobs For All Act''.
    (b) Table of Contents.--The table of contents is as follows:

Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.
Sec. 2. Basic rights and responsibilities.
Sec. 3. Program to implement basic rights and responsibilities.
Sec. 4. Truth in budgets.
Sec. 5. The Joint Economic Committee.
Sec. 6. Authorization of appropriations.

 SEC. 2. BASIC RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

    (a) In General.--The Congress affirms the responsibility of the 
Federal government to implement and, in accordance with current and 
foreseeable trends, update and extend, in accordance with subsections 
(b) and (c), the statement by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 
State of the Union message of January 11, 1944: ``In our days these 
economic truths have become self-evident. We have accepted so to speak 
a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and 
prosperity can be established for all--regardless of station, rank or 
creed. Among these are the following:
            ``(1) The right to a useful and remunerative job in the 
        industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation.
            ``(2) The right to earn enough to provide for an adequate 
        living.
            ``(3) The right of every farmer to raise and sell farm 
        products at a return which will provide a decent family living.
            ``(4) The right of every business, large or small, to trade 
        in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and 
        domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
            ``(5) The right of every family to a decent home.
            ``(6) The right to adequate medical care and the 
        opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
            ``(7) The right to adequate protection from the economic 
        fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
            ``(8) The right to a good education.''.
    (b) Update and Extension of Bill of Rights.--In updating and 
extending the 1944 bill of rights described in subsection (a), the 
Congress hereby proclaims the following:
            (1) The right of every adult American able and willing to 
        earn a living through paid work to a free choice among 
        opportunities for useful and productive paid employment (part- 
        or full-time) at decent real wages or for self-employment.
            (2) The right of every adult American unable to work for 
        pay or find employment pursuant to paragraph (1) to an adequate 
        standard of living that rises with increases in the wealth and 
        productivity of the society.
            (3) The right of all employees to organize and bargain 
        collectively in this country and other countries, to abstain 
        from any form of work or purchasing when necessary to protect 
        such right, and to receive full diplomatic, economic, and other 
        support from the Federal government in helping make this right 
        effective in other countries and eliminating policies or 
        activities that undermine such right.
            (4) The right of every adult American to live and work in a 
        safe and sustainable physical environment.
            (5) The right of every adult American to such widely 
        available health services as may be necessary and desirable to 
        extend both life expectancy and activity expectancy, reduce 
        mortality and disability through such non-contagious 
        afflictions as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infant mortality, 
        high blood pressure and obesity, reduce the incidence of such 
        contagious diseases as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 
        the virus that causes the acquired immune deficiency syndrome 
        (AIDS), and tuberculosis and raise the life and activity 
        expectancy of men to those of women, and reduce the incidence 
        of all forms of morbidity among ethnic minorities to the level 
        of others in the population.
            (6) The right of every adult American to currently 
        available and fully explained information on recent and 
foreseeable trends with respect to sources of pollution and on products 
and processes that threaten the health or life of people and on 
employment, unemployment, underemployment, economic insecurity, 
poverty, and the distribution of wealth and income, with detailed 
attention to various groups in the population and broader panoramic 
attention to such matters in each region of the world.
            (7) The right of every adult American to vote and to seek 
        nomination or election without having that right debased by the 
        domination of electoral campaigns by large-scale private 
        financing of campaign operations or by the scheduling of 
        elections during weekdays or in other manners that may 
        interfere with regular working hours.
            (8) The right of every adult American to personal security 
        against any form of violence, whether in the home, in the 
        workplace, on the streets and highways, or the Nation or world 
        as a whole.
    (c) Personal Responsibility.--The Congress hereby recognizes that 
every person benefiting from the rights set forth in subsections (a) 
and (b) has a personal responsibility to promote her or his health and 
wellbeing, rather than relying exclusively on health services by 
others, to provide for appropriate care of children and elderly 
parents, to protect the environment to the best of her or his 
individual ability, to work productively, to register and vote, to 
involve herself or himself in public concerns and in ongoing education 
and training, to speak out against corruption or injustice, and to 
cooperate with others in promoting the nonviolent handling of 
inevitable conflicts in the household, the workplace, and elsewhere.
    (d) Responsibility of Federal Government.--Each Federal agency and 
commission, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 
System, has the responsibility to plan and carry out its policies, 
programs, projects, and budgets in a manner designed to help establish 
and maintain conditions under which all adult Americans may freely 
exercise the rights or responsibilities recognized in subsections (a), 
(b), and (c). Each such Federal agency or commission shall not directly 
or indirectly promote recession, stagnation, or unemployment as a means 
of reducing wages and salaries or inflation.

SEC. 3. PROGRAM TO IMPLEMENT BASIC RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

    (a) Establishment of Program.--
            (1) In general.--The President shall establish a program--
                    (A) to establish and maintain conditions under 
                which the rights and responsibilities recognized in 
                section 3 may be exercised; and
                    (B) to implement the economic and social 
                obligations of the Federal Government under the 
                Employment Act of 1946, the Full Employment and 
                Balanced Growth Act of 1978, the Charter of the United 
                Nations, the Charter of the Organization of American 
                States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and 
                the International Covenant on Civil and Political 
                Rights.
            (2) Goals and general perspectives.--The program 
        established under paragraph (1) shall set forth--
                    (A) specific goals for reducing, not later than 
                three years after the date of the enactment of this 
                Act, officially measured unemployment to the interim 
                goal of 3 percent for individuals who have attained the 
                age of 20 and 4 percent for individuals who have 
                attained the age of 16 but have not attained the age of 
                20, as set forth in the Full Employment and Balanced 
                Growth Act of 1978; and
                    (B) general perspectives for the quality of life in 
                the United States by the year 2000 and the early years 
                of the 21st century.
            (3) Policies and projects.--The program established under 
        paragraph (1) shall include general and specific policies and 
        projects designed--
                    (A) to provide quick action to enlarge employment 
                opportunities through reductions in real interest 
                rates, and programs of private and public works and 
                services to use the abilities of the jobless in 
                repairing and improving the Nation's infrastructure of 
                private industry, public facilities, and human 
                services, with special emphasis on the availability of 
                good and affordable education, health promotion 
                services, housing, child care, artistic cultural 
                activities, and basic as well as applied research and 
                development;
                    (B) to provide quick action to begin staged 
                reductions in the length of the work year through 
                longer paid vacations, the elimination of compulsory 
                overtime, curbing excessive overtime through an 
                increase in the premium to triple time on all hours in 
                excess of 40 hours in any week, exempting 
                administrative, executive, and professional employees 
                from the overtime premium only if their salary levels 
                are three times the annual value of the minimum wage, 
                reducing the average work week in manufacturing and 
                mining to no more than 35 hours without any 
                corresponding loss in weekly wages, and voluntary work-
                sharing arrangements;
                    (C) to vastly increase the opportunities for 
                freely-chosen part-time employment, with social 
                security and health benefits, to meet the needs of 
                older people, students, the individuals with 
                disabilities and people with housekeeping and child 
                care responsibilities;
                    (D) to take such other steps as may be needed to 
                cope with the threats of increased joblessness caused 
                by technologies that replace people with robots and 
                other machines, including vastly improved opportunities 
                for up-to-date and effective education, training, or 
                retraining;
                    (E) to prevent or control inflationary tendencies 
                through a full battery of standby policies, including 
                public controls over price fixing through monopolistic 
                practices or restraint of trade, the promotion of 
                competition and productivity, and wage-price policies 
                arrived at through tripartite business-labor-government 
                cooperation;
                    (F) to provide improved Federal incentives for 
                investment, expansion, and increased employment by 
                small, medium, and large business enterprises, and by 
                such other private sectors entities as labor unions, 
                professional associations, and non-profit, voluntary, 
                and cooperative organizations, including neighborhood, 
                tenant, home owner and self-help associations, and 
                organizations of family farmers, women, minorities, and 
                the unemployed; and
                    (G) to promote conditions for more self-empowerment 
                by people victimized by discrimination in hiring, 
                training, wages, salaries, fringe benefits, or 
                promotion on the basis of prejudice concerning race, 
                color, sex language, religion, political or other 
                opinions, national social origin, property, birth or 
                other status, station in life, political or sexual 
                orientation, or personal disability.
    (b) Inclusion of Program in Annual Submission of Budget.--Section 
1105(a) of title 31, United States Code, is amended by adding at the 
end the following new paragraph:
            ``(30) beginning with fiscal year 1996, a description of 
        the program to implement the basic rights and responsibilities 
        in the United States as provided for in section 3(a) of the A 
        Living Wage, Jobs For All Act.''.

SEC. 4. TRUTH IN BUDGETS.

    All budget messages transmitted from the President to the Congress 
shall be based on policies and programs to reduce officially measured 
unemployment to the interim levels set forth in the Full Employment and 
Balanced Growth Act of 1978 and toward this end shall include--
            (1) such full distinctions between operating and investment 
        outlays as regularly appear in the budgets of business 
        organizations and State and local governments;
            (2) not only gross outlays but also net outlays calculated 
        in terms of estimates on consequences of additional paid 
        employment may have on--
                    (A) reducing outlays by reducing the number of 
                people receiving unemployment compensation, public 
                assistance, and other transfer payments (without 
                necessarily including reduced outlays resulting from 
                improvements in public health and safety); and
                    (B) increasing tax receipts as a result of more 
                people earning income subject to social security and 
                income taxes and more business enterprises earning the 
                larger, more stable and less subsidized total profits 
                possible under conditions of full employment;
            (3) a general impact analysis on the direct and indirect 
        consequences flowing from each over-all budget for levels of 
        employment, output and prices, foreign trade, environmental 
        quality, the distribution of income and wealth, and whatever 
        benefits may be conferred or costs imposed on various 
        institutions, groups and persons in society;
            (4) to facilitate local initiatives and State 
        responsibilities, estimates of the direct and indirect flow of 
        all Federal outlays (including off-budget outlays) to each 
        State and each district represented by the members of the House 
        of Representatives;
            (5) a tax expenditure budget, as defined in the 
        Congressional Budget Act of 1974, but presented not only in a 
        separately published special analysis but also incorporated 
        into the general revenue provisions of the budget and 
        accompanied by estimates of the benefits sought and thus far 
        obtained by such planned losses of tax revenue;
            (6) a zero-based budgetary review of every program 
        involving more than $1,000,000,000 in gross outlays;
            (7) a wealth inventory providing information on recent and 
        prospective changes in the type and estimated value of assets 
        owned by the Federal government and State and local 
        governments, personal wealth, and the net stock of both 
        reproducible and non-reproducible tangible wealth in the United 
        States; and
            (8) the expression of any debt and deficit data in constant 
        as well as current dollars.

SEC. 5. JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE.

    (a) Monitoring of Actions Under This Act.--In addition to its 
responsibilities under the Employment Act of 1946, the Joint Economic 
Committee shall monitor all actions taken or proposed to be taken to 
carry out the purposes under this Act.
    (b) Report.--The Joint Economic Committee shall prepare and submit 
to the Congress, and publish in Federal Register, an annual report 
containing a summary of the findings of the Committee with respect to 
the actions monitored under subsection (a) for the preceding year, with 
special attention to the extent to which the President and Federal 
agencies have faithfully executed or may have failed to faithfully 
execute the provisions of this Act and fulfill their obligations under 
international covenants and conventions.
    (c) Concurrent Resolution on Economic Policy.--Not later than July 
1 of each year the Joint Economic Committee shall submit to the Senate 
and the House of Representatives a Concurrent Resolution on Economic 
Policy setting forth both in aggregate terms and in detail its proposed 
goals for employment by type of employment, with special attention to 
hours, wages, and social benefits, and for reducing unemployment, 
underemployment, and poverty in urban, suburban and rural areas. 
Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, these goals shall serve as 
the framework for any concurrent resolutions on the Federal budget.

SEC. 6. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

    There are hereby authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be 
necessary to implement the policies, programs and projects set forth in 
accordance with this Act.
                                 <all>