[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H5384]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          MINIMUM WAGE AT 40-YEAR LOW; AMERICANS NEED A RAISE

  (Mr. DOGGETT asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, America need a raise. With the minimum wage 
at a 40-year low, America needs a raise. But our Republican colleagues, 
when the housing bill was up, instead of giving us a minimum wage 
increase they raised rents. And last week, when the wilderness bill was 
up, instead of giving us a raise in wages, they raised the number of 
acres that could be exploited with reference to the environment.
  Now we reach today and we get another vote on the minimum wage, but 
what do our Republican colleagues propose? Instead of a real raise that 
working people can feel in their pocketbooks, they propose to raise the 
exclusion, exclude more workers from the basic fundamental protection 
of the minimum wage.
  It seems to me these Gingrich-ites do not know up from down. American 
workers need to go up. They need to be empowered by an increase in the 
minimum wage, not be excluded from the basic fundamental protection and 
the sweatshops of getting any minimum wage at all.
  Let us reject this Gingrich-ite proposal to exclude more American 
working families, and let us empower them with a real increase in the 
minimum wage.

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