[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 14, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H4909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MINIMUM WAGE QUOTES

  (Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, now the President wants to ``make work 
pay'' by raising the minimum wage. Yet just 2 years ago he said that 
raising the minimum wage is ``the wrong way to raise the income of low-
wage earners.''
  President Clinton knows that upgrading worker skills results in an 
increase in wages. He has said that ``what you earn depends on what you 
learn; the most effective way to help is to make workers more 
productive because wages reflect the value of what people produce.''
  ``After all, most minimum wage workers are not poor.'' That is 
Secretary Reich to President Clinton.
  ``An increased minimum wage often takes from the poor to help the 
middle class.'' That is economist Robert Shapiro, friend of Bill 
Clinton's.

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