[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 27, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H21]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  IT IS TIME TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE

  (Mr. BONIOR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, our economy is the strongest that it has 
been in several decades. Wall Street is having one of the best years 
ever. The New York Times reported recently that more than 1,000 people 
on Wall Street got bonuses over $1 million. So it is time for working 
families to share in this great prosperity.
  That is why Senator Kennedy and I today are introducing legislations 
in the respective bodies of raising the minimum wage to $6.65 an hour 
to help restore some of the buying power of the minimum wage earners 
that have been lost over the last 30 years. Raising the minimum wage 
will help 12 million workers in this country, many of them, 66 percent, 
adults, and many of those mothers with children. A mother with 2 
children earns $10,700 a year. She chose work over welfare and yet she 
is $2,600 below the poverty line. That is a disgrace. We need to get on 
and raise the minimum wage. It is indeed about creating opportunity, it 
is about rewarding work, about fairness, about dignity. Let us raise 
the minimum wage.

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