[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 5 (Thursday, January 9, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H81]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      IT IS TIME TO RAISE THE WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Al Green) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker and friends, it is no coincidence 
that President Johnson declared a war on poverty within 6 months after 
Dr. King gave his ``I Have a Dream'' speech on the Mall in Washington. 
Whether by accident or whether by design, Dr. King and President 
Johnson worked in tandem with each other. They had something in common: 
they were both intelligent in their own right.
  But intelligence without courage can be intelligence wasted. They 
both understood the politics of their time, but understanding the 
politics of your time without courage can be an understanding wasted. 
It was courage that made the difference in the lives of people for 
decades after they each did what they had to do. I thank God that Dr. 
King and President Johnson acted in tandem and that they both had 
courage.
  The marchers on Washington had 10 demands. Number 8 on that list of 
10 demands was a demand to raise the wage to an amount that people 
could make a living off of, $2 an hour. That $2 an hour, adjusted for 
inflation today, would be $13.39, more than $13 an hour. Mr. Speaker 
and friends, it is time to raise the wage.
  A UC Berkeley Labor Center report in 2013 connoted, denoted, and 
showed that families working in the fast food industry are subsidized 
to the tune of about $7 billion. It is time to raise the wage. That 
same report showed that 63 percent of all families receiving subsidies 
had a working member. It is time to raise the wage.
  Corporate welfare, corporations paying poverty wages, are indirectly 
subsidized with tax dollars when tax dollars provide food stamps, SNAP, 
Medicaid, and other assistance to workers. Indirect corporate subsidies 
will diminish and tax dollars will be saved when we raise the wage.
  Do you like trickle-down economics? If so, you ought to want to raise 
the wage because by raising the wage, we can assure that the earned 
trickle will get down to the worker that has earned it. It is time to 
raise the wage.
  Do you think people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps? 
Then raise the wage, and people will be able to pull themselves up out 
of poverty with their economic bootstraps.
  Can we afford to raise the wage? Mr. Speaker and friends, yes, we 
can. On February 13, 2013, The Washington Post reported that the United 
States has one of the lowest minimum wages among developed countries, 
even though we are among the richest countries in the world. One out of 
every 60 persons is a millionaire. One out of every 11 households is 
worth $1 million. According to the AFL-CIO, CEO pay has gone from $42 
for every $1 a worker made in 1982 to $354 for every dollar a worker 
made in 2012. It is time to raise the wage.

                              {time}  1100

  According to Forbes, the top 25 CEOs of hedge funds--the top 25 
earners at hedge funds--earn more than all 500 of the top CEOs in the 
Fortune 500 combined. It is time to raise the wage.
  In 2007, one CEO made $3 billion; $3 billion is $400 a second. It 
would take a minimum-wage worker working full-time 198,000 years. Some 
things bear repeating: it would take a minimum-wage worker 198,000 
years to make what that CEO made in 1 year. It is time to raise the 
wage.
  If we can pay CEOs $400 a second, we can raise the wage. If we can 
pay corporate CEOs 354 times what workers are making, we can raise the 
wage to $13 an hour.

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