[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 98 (Monday, July 24, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H5663-H5664]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO THOMAS J. MANTON AND ARGUMENT FOR RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Tribute to Thomas J. Manton
Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I would like to add my sentiments to the
words that have been spoken already. I associate myself with the
remarks that have been made about Tom Manton.
Tom Manton was a political leader in an adjacent county, the Borough
of Queens. In the Borough of Brooklyn we had what we call a first-rate
political machine, and in view of the fact we have been discussing
power-sharing and the Voting Rights Act, I remember dramatically seeing
the difference between Brooklyn and Queens.
As a leader in Queens, Tom Manton believed in power-sharing.
Minorities did not have to fight to get what they deserved in Queens.
Harmony was not established only after a big battle was waged and the
spoils were settled. In Brooklyn we had to battle for everything. We
had to fight all the way.
Tom Manton was a political boss. He was head of a machine. But he
gave new meaning to the word machine and being a boss. A conciliator, a
mediator, a guy who made things happen as he took this diverse, rapidly
growing borough, rapidly growing in terms of diverse population, he
wove it altogether
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without bitter fights and without leaving a lot of blood in the aisles.
So I take my hat off to Tom Manton and the kind of example he made. I
can add very little to what my colleagues have already said.
Argument for Raising the Minimum Wage
Madam Speaker, I wanted to speak tonight about a subject we have been
talking about for quite a while here, and that is raising the minimum
wage.
I also know that almost nothing new can be said about the need for an
increase in the minimum wage. My colleagues have been on the floor for
the last 2 weeks hammering away at the subject. The facts surrounding
this gross injustice have been recited again and again.
I am a cosponsor of a simple legislative vehicle which will raise the
minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.15 an hour. Our ranking member of the
Education and the Workforce Committee, George Miller, has already used
every known legislative and publicity maneuver known to man to confront
the majority Republicans with a need to place this issue on the floor
for a vote. The 30-something Group has done a fantastic job with charts
and graphs, making it crystal clear how ridiculous it is that we have
not raised the minimum wage since 1997. I can't add much to that.
Madam Speaker, I want to address this subject from a different
perspective. I want to talk about the fact that the people earning
minimum wage at the very bottom are the people that we need in this
society. We need everybody to be in a position where they can rise in
this society, and a decent income for a family is the beginning of the
process of moving toward the middle class.
``Middle-class'' covers a whole lot of things, but I am going to
oversimplify the matter and say it is generally felt what makes the
world go around economically and politically is a middle class. Every
nation needs a middle class.
There has been a lot of talk about the fact that in China in the next
10 years, 25 percent of its population will be middle class. What is 25
percent of China's population of 1.2 billion? It is 300 million people
that will be in the Chinese middle class. About the same number of
people will move into the middle class in India in 10 years, 300
million.
Now, what is the population of the United States? Our total
population is 300 million. If we are going to compete with China and
India, the middle class is a competitive class. That is the educated
class. That is the people that have technical proficiency to compete
with us in the high-tech area. They are doing it and will do more of
it. In addition to China and India, you have Russia and a number of
other places in Europe that will have middle-class folks to be in that
competitive arena.
We need every American to be competitive. We have only got 300
million. Our goal should be to make every American a part of the middle
class, because middle class, as I said before, means the productive
class, the people who can make a contribution toward our society, who
can take care of themselves and help take care of various functions in
our society.
At every level we need excellence, better educated people. I am
talking about from the guy who pours the concrete to the engineer who
designs the tunnels and bridges. We need competence, we need people who
are constantly raising the level and moving toward excellence.
Blunders in our society internally may destroy us faster than any
outside enemy, blunders by people who are not competent, blunders
because we run out of talent, because we run out of people who know
what they are doing, or we run out of a competitive situation where
there are enough people in a given area to be able to chastise,
examine, criticize and keep other people in line. We had such a major
blunder in the building of the levees in New Orleans.
Madam Speaker, I will submit an article for the Record from the New
York Times by Paul Krugman entitled ``Black and Blue,'' which is in
regards to the minimum wage.
[From the New York Times, July 24, 2006]
Black and Blue
(By Paul Krugman)
According to the White House transcript, here's how it went
last week, when President Bush addressed the N.A.A.C.P. for
the first time:
THE PRESIDENT: ``I understand that many African-Americans
distrust my political party.''
AUDIENCE: ``Yes! (Applause.)''
But Mr. Bush didn't talk about why African-Americans don't
trust his party, and black districts are always blue on
election maps. So let me fill in the blanks.
First, G.O.P. policies consistently help those who are
already doing extremely well, not those lagging behind--a
group that includes the vast majority of African-Americans.
And both the relative and absolute economic status of blacks,
after improving substantially during the Clinton years, have
worsened since 2000.
The G.O.P. obsession with helping the haves and have-mores,
and lack of concern for everyone else, was evident even in
Mr. Bush's speech to the N.A.A.C.P. Mr. Bush never mentioned,
wages, which have been falling behind inflation for most
workers. And he certainly didn't mention the minimum wage,
which disproportionately affects African-American workers,
and which he has allowed to fall to its lowest real level
since 1955.
Mr. Bush also never used the word ``poverty,'' a condition
that afflicts almost one in four blacks.
But he found time to call for repeal of the estate tax,
even though African-Americans are more than a thousand times
as likely to live below the poverty line as they are to be
rich enough to leave a taxable estate.
Economic issues alone, then, partially explain African-
American disdain for the G.O.P.
But even more important is the way Republicans win
elections.
The problem with policies that favor the economic elite is
that by themselves they're not a winning electoral strategy,
because there aren't enough elite voters. So how did the
Republicans rise to their current position of political
dominance? It's hard to deny that barely concealed appeals to
racism, which drove a wedge between blacks and relatively
poor whites who share the same economic interests, played a
crucial role.
Don't forget that in 1980, the sainted Ronald Reagan began
his presidential campaign with a speech on states' rights in
Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were
murdered in 1964.
These days the racist appeals have been toned down; Trent
Lott was demoted, though not drummed out of the party, when
he declared that if Strom Thurmond's segregationist
presidential campaign had succeeded ``we wouldn't have had
all these problems.'' Meanwhile, the G.O.P. has found other
ways to, obscure its economic elitism. The Bush
administration has proved utterly incompetent in fighting
terrorists, but it has skillfully exploited the terrorist
threat for domestic political gain. And there are also the
``values'' issues: abortion, stem cells, gay marriage.
But the nasty racial roots of the G.O.P.'s triumph live on
in public policy and election strategy.
A revelatory article in yesterday's Boston Globe described
how the Bush administration has politicized the Justice
Department's civil rights division, ``filling the permanent
ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials
but little experience in civil rights.''
Not surprisingly, there has been a shift in priorities:
``The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment
cases involving systematic discrimination against African-
Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against
whites and religious discrimination against Christians.''
Above all, there's the continuing effort of the G.O.P. to
suppress black voting.
The Supreme Court probably wouldn't have been able to put
Mr. Bush in the White House in 2000 if the administration of
his brother, the governor of Florida, hadn't misidentified
large numbers of African-Americans as felons ineligible to
vote. In 2004, Ohio's Republican secretary of state tried to
impose a ludicrous rule on the paper weight of voter
registration applications; last year, Georgia Republicans
tried to impose an onerous ``voter ID'' rule. In each case,
the obvious intent was to disenfranchise blacks.
And if the Republicans hold on to the House this fall, it
will probably only be because of a redistricting plan in
Texas that a panel of Justice Department lawyers unanimously
concluded violated the Voting Rights Act--only to be
overruled by their politically appointed superiors.
So yes, African-Americans distrust Mr. Bush's party--with
good reason.
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