[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 58 (Wednesday, May 1, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4371-H4372]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   WE NEED TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have tried to compile the reasons why 
the Republican majority will not allow us to vote on a minimum wage 
increase, and the first reason I came up with was, of course, stated by 
Majority Whip DeLay, who says that minimum wage families do not really 
exist. He says, ``Emotional appeals about working families trying to 
get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately such families 
do not really exist.''
  An honorary member of the Republican freshman class, Rush Limbaugh, 
says on the official poverty line, ``14,400 for a family of 4? That's 
not so bad.''
  Now he said that in November 1993.
  Earlier he said, ``I know families that make $180,000 a year and they 
don't consider themselves rich. Why, it costs them $20,000 a year to 
send their kids to school.''
  Unfortunately, the House majority leader, Dick Armey, has said that 
he will resist a minimum wage increase with every fiber in his being. 
He says that the minimum wage is a very destructive thing.
  Limbaugh goes on to say, ``All of these rich guys like the Kennedy 
family and Perot, pretending to live just like we do and pretending to 
understand our trials and tribulations and pretending to represent us, 
and they get away with this.''
  Well, in 1993 while Limbaugh was equating himself with the average 
American family, Limbaugh's 1993 income was estimated to be $15 
million. That is from Forbes, April 1994.
  One of the freshmen who also does not know about middle-class living, 
real middle-class living, says, ``300,000 to $750,000 a year, that's 
middle class.''
  I think that is out of touch. And anyone who makes above $750,000 a 
year, he says, ``that's upper middle class.'' Now, this is a real 
person who is representing all of the American folks in this Congress.
  But what about the people who really are working hard and making 
minimum wage and need a little bit of representation down here on the 
floor of

[[Page H4372]]

this House? Who is it that our Republican majority is representing, and 
who is it that people who are fighting for a minimum wage increase are 
representing?
  This is a cartoon from the National Journal. How long does it take to 
make $8,840? Full-time minimum wage worker, it takes this poor woman 
one year, because most of them are women. And the average CEO of a 
large U.S. corporation? Half a day.
  So we do need to raise the minimum wage.
  Finally, I keep coming back to this poster, because it so accurately 
describes what is going on in Washington today with this new Republican 
majority. It says, ``The 104th Congress may be the worst in 50 years.''
  And while we cannot get an increase, a vote on increasing the minimum 
wage, we learned that the GOP has decided that they want their 
committee Chairs to look into abuses of the Clinton administration and 
of labor organizations. This very well could go down in history as the 
worst Congress in 50 years.

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