[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 15, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H2255-H2260]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS HOUR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Mimi Walters of California). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from New 
Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman) is recognized for 60 minutes as the 
designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from New Jersey?
  There was no objection.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Today, low-wage workers across the country 
rallied in small towns and big cities. Their request is very simple: a 
livable wage and the right to organize.
  This isn't rocket science. These folks turn on the news and see 
reports on stock market gains on Wall Street. They see companies 
reporting record profits. They see the prices for bread and a carton of 
milk rising every month. Then they open their paychecks and see the 
same amount that they have seen for the past 10 years.
  This is a crisis that my colleagues across the aisle keep trying to 
brush under a political rug. That may have worked in the past, but it 
is just getting too big to be hidden.
  According to UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the Nation's 100 
richest families have as much wealth as the 80 million families that 
make up the bottom 50 percent in wealth. Meanwhile, Republicans keep 
trying to peddle the same, tired ``work hard and get ahead'' rhetoric.
  Madam Speaker, American workers are doing just that. They are 
stringing together 40-hour weeks whenever they can. In many cases, they 
are not given the opportunity to even do that, but they are being paid 
wages that cobble together to just over $15,000 a year.
  Even when McDonald's raises wages for the fraction of its workers 
behind the counters of their corporate stores, they will only get a 
raise of $5,000. $5,000 will make a huge difference for those families, 
but at $20,000, they have gone from drowning to just barely keeping 
their heads above water.
  That is not enough to pay for a college education or to buy a home. 
That is not enough to save for retirement. That is not enough to pay 
for medical bills. Madam Speaker, that is not enough to achieve the 
American Dream.
  My Progressive Caucus colleagues and I are here on the floor tonight 
to stand with workers in the fight for $15, that is $15 an hour and the 
right to form unions.
  It is time to support working families, and it is time to make it 
possible to work hard and get ahead.
  It is now my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. 
Ellison), one of the chairs of our caucus.
  Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I had an interesting story today. I was talking with a 
young lady named Stacy Mitchell, who is a researcher.
  She does a lot of research on this issue of what is the economic 
effect of raising the minimum wage because what you hear so many 
conservatives say is, if we raise the minimum wage, maybe there will be 
a lot of workers who simply will not be employable because they don't 
have the skill level to be employed, they don't bring enough value to 
the business to pay them $15 an hour.
  What she showed--and this is through research--is that low wages lead 
to workers who have a lot of high turnover. High turnover leads to 
mistakes, leads to errors, leads to training errors, leads to bad 
customer service when the workers don't have a firm grip on what they 
have been doing. High turnover and the need to retrain then leads to a 
loss of money, and they have calculated that to about $12,000 a year 
for the average small business.
  Now, folks who are interested in learning more about this can contact 
the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This is a small-business 
organization that says that we can have more economic viability if we 
focus on small business and not just the big-box retailer.
  Of course, it is interesting because, whenever you talk to the big-
box retailer about raising the minimum wage or whether you talk to 
McDonald's or Walmart, they always say: yeah, we are making record 
profits; but what about the small business?
  It was pretty surprising to hear that there are a lot of small 
businesses that have decided to pay people a better wage, keep them on 
the job, and as they stay on the job, they learn the job better, serve 
the customer better, and end up making the business more profitable 
overall.
  A lot of businesspeople, whether it is Costco or Ben & Jerry's, are 
challenging this idea by the rightwing conservative business types that 
squeezing the most out of the worker, hurting the worker, taking the 
most out of the worker, paying the worker the least you can possibly 
afford--not any health care, not any sick days--just squeezing the life 
out of that worker is not a good business model. There are other ways 
to do it. There are ways for everyone to succeed.

  Now, sometimes, my friends on the other side of the aisle like to 
say: Have you ever run a business? In fact, I have. I am a 
businessowner. I ran my own law firm for years. I employed 
investigators. I employed legal assistants. I even hired some lawyers.
  When people arrogantly talk about, Oh, I know business, and you 
don't, it always makes me chuckle a little bit because I actually have 
run a business--owned a business--and actually have run fairly large 
nonprofits, which are also businesses.
  It is clear to me that the real thing that I cared about as a 
businessperson is customers coming through the door. I needed people 
with money who could pay me. That is what I needed. If nobody was 
making any money, they couldn't pay me.
  What was always better for me is being in a vibrant, strong community 
with an economy where prosperity was shared so that people had some 
business for me.
  It is funny; I never worried about taxes too much. I can't imagine 
too many small-businesspeople staying up all night worrying about 
taxes. You know what they are worried about? Customers coming through 
the door, clients coming through the door, people who need haircuts, 
people who need meals, people who need a lawyer to do their will--that 
is what you have got to have.
  But if the average working class person is broke because they have 
been getting paid $7 an hour or whatever, they can't spend money with 
you.
  It was interesting to me, when I first got to Congress, this was 
right before the real hit in the financial system in 2008. I was at a 
committee hearing, I will let the gentlewoman know, and I asked one of 
the witnesses at the committee hearing what their opinion was about 
Americans having negative savings because I found a statistic that 
Americans had a negative 2 percent savings rate.
  That meant that you were borrowing to consume. That meant that you

[[Page H2256]]

didn't have money, and you had to go to the credit card, the payday 
loan, title loan, something like that, to make it through the week.
  This person looked at me and said: Well, there is so much equity 
people have in their homes; that is not a problem.
  This is an economist I will never listen to again. The bottom line 
is, when you pay people more, they can save. They can save for 
retirement. When you pay people more, that makes them more loyal to 
you. I actually paid people as much as I could--way over minimum wage--
and the reason why is I needed my legal secretary to know how to 
prepare documents the way I needed them.
  I needed her to know how to prepare the document so that I could read 
it over, make sure that this divorce or this will or whatever it was 
that I was doing for them was right; and the better she got at what she 
was doing, the faster I could work. I was happy to pay her because the 
customer was happy to pay. The real job was getting customers in the 
door, and paying workers better was smarter and more profitable for me.
  I absolutely reject this model that you squeeze the life out of the 
worker and try to make sure that they don't have anything except for 
the bus fare to get back to work the next day. This is absolutely 
wrong. Yes, you can run a business like that; you can make a lot of 
money like that, but you will ruin society doing things like that.
  I actually liked paying taxes so we could have the Metro rail to get 
people to work, so the bus would come. I didn't mind being able to turn 
on the spigot and have clean water come out of the faucet in Minnesota.
  I don't understand these people who claim to be for business, don't 
want to pay any taxes, don't want to train anybody, don't want to pay 
any decent wages, and hate health care. It is the craziest thing in the 
world. It is actually bad for business and leads to very extremes in 
society, the extremely rich and the vast ocean of the poor.
  How many people have you talked to who sit back and say, You know 
what, you used to be able to get into the middle class by becoming a 
small-businessperson or getting a good union job?
  The conservative rightwing attacks both. The conservative rightwing 
attacks unions. The conservative rightwing doesn't like unions, and 
they are union busters, so union membership has declined. As they have 
pushed this right-to-work garbage, what we have seen is wages go down 
at the very same time.
  It is a funny thing about these big, big, big business types. 
Whenever they come to my office asking for whatever, they always talk 
in terms of the small business. I always find it somewhat amusing when 
the big businesses that pay poverty wages say: well, if we raise the 
minimum wage, it is going to hurt small business.
  I think to myself: Man, when was the last time you were ever running 
a small business? You don't pay any taxes because you have got lawyers 
trying to figure out how to get around them. You don't deal with what 
the small-businessperson has to deal with.
  They actually have to earn a living and come up with a product or 
service that people really want, and they don't get tax breaks the way 
you do. They don't have an army of lawyers to help them escape their 
responsibility to help fund the U.S. Government.
  What does all that have to do with today? Well, low-wage workers have 
finally gotten sick of it. Today, over 200 cities are standing together 
to call for $15 an hour. Thirty different countries are standing in 
solidarity with low-wage workers, calling for $15 an hour.
  I am proud that, in my own city of Minneapolis, low-wage workers have 
gone out and are on strike to demand $15 an hour. These are the people 
who make the hamburgers, they fry the chicken, they sweep the floors. 
They do the stuff that, if it doesn't get done, the business crashes.
  I am going to tell you honestly, in the business I ran, if I wanted 
to go on vacation for a day or two, I probably could; but, if my legal 
secretary and my investigator and the lawyer that I hired didn't show 
up, I would be in trouble. I couldn't go anywhere.
  I guarantee you that you can't show me a CEO of a business that is a 
big business who can't show up or go on a long golfing trip, whatever; 
but, if you let the people who actually fry the chicken not show up, 
this place will grind to a halt.

                              {time}  1800

  So I was very glad to see tens of thousands of low-wage workers in 
more than 200 cities standing together to call for $15 an hour. These 
workers are White, they are Black, they are Latino, they are Asian. 
They are young, they are old. Some of them are senior citizens.
  These workers, some of them were born in the United States, and some 
of them came here from other places. They are diverse, but they are 
unified in the idea that in America we ought to have a fair economy 
that makes sure that everybody can climb the ladder of success, not 
just a few who want to concentrate wealth at the very top.
  Then after they get to the top, they don't want to pay any taxes, 
they don't want to pay for public services, and they want to divide 
people. They want to divide people.
  These workers, they don't care if you are straight or gay. They want 
to know, Are you down with raising the wage?
  They don't care if you are Latino or maybe you are Black. They don't 
care. They care about, are you for an economic ladder that everyone can 
climb if they work hard.
  We are in an America today where the people at the top, many of them 
are highly divisive. They want to split the straight from the gay, the 
Black from the White. They want to break everybody up because they know 
that is the only way they can keep the control that they have.
  So we are unified around our common humanity, our love of this 
country and our belief that this is the land of opportunity. That is 
just not some slogan. It has got to be real, and it has got to mean 
something. And anybody who puts in a hard week of work ought to be able 
to do well by their family.
  Here is one of the most amazing things. This statistic really blew me 
out.
  And by the way, please just ask me to yield when you are sick of me 
going on.
  I just thought I would share this little statistic with you because 
it really did shock me, because, you know, the conservative rightwing 
is very proud of how they claim, Oh, we are self-reliant. We don't ask 
anybody for anything. We believe people should work for themselves. And 
they are real hard on folks with government assistance.
  But did you know that--I am looking for this statistic right here. I 
had it just a moment ago. It blew my mind when I saw it.
  It showed that if you add up all of the public assistance that low-
wage workers have to rely on because their bosses will not pay them 
properly--Uncle Sam has to pay if the people don't have a livable wage. 
If they don't have enough for rent and food because their job won't pay 
them enough, then these people go on public assistance.
  If you add up all that public assistance, it basically is a subsidy 
to Big Business, and I think that number is about $150 billion. It is 
about $150 billion of welfare, welfare that some of these conservative 
corporate types are mooching off the American people.
  And their chest is always poked out about how we work for ourselves. 
We don't rely on anyone.
  Well, wait a minute. These folks work hard every day, getting 
splattered with grease, pushing a broom, making hamburgers, customer 
after customer, on your feet all day long. These folks work hard, but 
$150 billion of accumulated subsidy to the working poor.
  I will never forget how Walmart--yes, I said the name. And by the 
way, I want to congratulate them for raising the wage. You ought to say 
what is good when it happens. Thank you, Walmart, for raising the wage.
  But I do have to tell on you a little bit because last Christmas, 
which is the spirit of giving, they put out a bucket asking their 
customers to put canned goods in the bucket so that their customers 
would give canned food goods so that they would distribute them to 
their workers. I am sure somebody thought that was a clever business 
idea.
  Wait a minute. You want the customers to give free canned goods to

[[Page H2257]]

your workers because you will not pay them?
  You know, McDonald's had this proposed budget that was proposing, I 
don't know, all kinds of crazy things that--undignified things people 
were asked to do.
  At the end of the day, though, I just want to say that these workers 
who have gone out, over 200 cities, where workers are going out on 
strike, saying that we need to get paid more, I am very proud of these 
people.
  This is a great American tradition. Civil disobedience, striking has 
been something in America, sometimes when you don't have any bargaining 
power, when you don't have a union, when the National Labor Relations 
Board will not protect you quickly enough because it has been weakened 
by the conservative wing, then you have got to strike. What else are 
you going to do?
  America's elected leaders and CEOs are finally waking up to the 
reality that a low-wage economy, in which many can't afford basic 
necessities and are forced to rely on public aid, isn't good for 
working families, or the economy, or the taxpayer.
  Last year, the President issued executive orders that ensured the 
minimum wage and workplace protections for Americans working under 
Federal contracts.
  And over the last few months, what we have seen is that employers 
like Walmart, Target, T.J. Maxx, McDonald's, have announced raises for 
the employees.
  Do you really believe they would have done it without these strikes? 
Absolutely not. They wouldn't have given these poor folks a penny. They 
had to go on strike. They had to. They had no choice. They were pushed 
to the brink.
  I am about to yield back to the gentlelady, but I just want to tell 
folks about the model employer and labor rights.
  In Congress we can help support this movement by continuing to join 
workers in their strikes and by fighting for action at the Federal 
level.
  The Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for a model employer 
executive order that gives preference for Federal contracts to 
companies that do more than just pay the minimum by providing things 
like livable wages, paid leave, health benefits, and respecting their 
employees' right to collectively bargain.
  That will restore the American middle class.
  As I take my seat, I just want to point out to the gentlewoman from 
New Jersey, in 1957 there were a lot of things that America needed to 
improve. We had racism, segregation. Women could not rise to their 
potential. There were a lot of things America needed to do better at.
  But in 1957, about 35 percent of the American workforce was in a 
union. And guess what? One person could feed a family of four. One 
person could feed a family of four.
  Now, because people have been pushing trickle-down economics, 
Reaganomics, whatever, and we say we are going to squeeze the workers, 
we are going to offshore their job, the rich won't pay any taxes, and 
we are not going to provide any services, and we are going to break the 
unions, now, for 40 years, we have seen wages flat, and we have seen 
this thing happen. We have seen these bad outcomes.

  But you know what?
  Today is a new day. People are wise to it, and they are unifying 
together to push back and make a brand new economy where we can have 
the public sector and the private sector work together for the 
betterment of the American people.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I thank the gentleman for the fine points that 
he has made. I can speak from a personal perspective. I am one of four 
siblings, and my father was the bread earner and my mother was the 
woman who was taking care of our family. And he, indeed, did provide a 
good and wholesome living for his family.
  Madam Speaker, right now, tens of thousands of American workers in 
fast food and child care and home care and airport services, and even 
in professional positions in higher education, are not being paid 
enough to survive. And what that means, and I believe that my colleague 
did mention it, it becomes a drag on the economy.
  Our economy does rely on consumers buying products. They want not 
just products that they need. Spending is what gives companies, big and 
small, the revenue to expand and hire more workers. Ideally, it is also 
what gives companies the revenue to increase wages.
  But if you ask the workers who are fighting for $15 an hour, they 
will tell you that a wage increase has been nowhere in sight.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to my colleague from the great State of 
California, Congresswoman Lee.
  Ms. LEE. Let me thank you, Congresswoman Watson Coleman, for yielding 
and for hosting this important Special Order on the need to provide all 
Americans a good-paying job and the right to form a union.
  I want to thank you for your tremendous leadership each and every 
day, for making sure that we stay on point on all of these economic 
issues that mean so much to people who are working yet still live below 
the poverty line. So thank you again.
  This afternoon, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which I am 
proud to serve as the whip of, welcomed experts and low-wage workers to 
the Hill for a forum.
  Now, each of the workers told powerful stories, and I hope that these 
are stories that Members here on both sides of the House will listen 
to. They spoke of struggling to get by, despite working full time on 
paychecks that are just too small. I hope we will take their struggles 
to heart and join the Congressional Progressive Caucus in our efforts 
to ensure a good-paying job for all Americans.
  Too many Americans are still struggling to find a job that pays more 
than the bare minimum. They don't want to just get by. They want to get 
ahead, and they want to live the American Dream. They deserve to live 
the American Dream.
  They are looking for a job that pays an actual living wage, a job 
that will provide them with paychecks big enough to lift themselves out 
of poverty into the middle class, a job where they can take care of 
their families and make sure the bills are paid, and maybe save for 
retirement. These are American values that everyone wants to live by 
and to achieve.
  A few decades ago, these jobs were accessible to most Americans. Yet, 
because of the Great Recession and wage stagnation, too many Americans 
are working harder and harder for paychecks that keep them trapped in 
poverty. In the world's richest and most powerful Nation, this really 
is a disgrace.
  A report released just 2 days ago from the University of California 
at Berkeley, in my district, found that allowing companies to pay 
workers wages that keep them in poverty costs taxpayers $152 billion a 
year. That is outrageous.
  Instead of doing the right thing and paying for a living wage, these 
corporations are reaping record corporate profits while leaving 
families to struggle and taxpayers on the hook.
  Now, as a former small-businessowner myself, I can tell you that 
paying poverty wage is no way to run a business. Paying a living wage 
with benefits is good for business, and it is the right thing to do.
  As we continue to build support for the Good Jobs Movement, I know 
that more and more businessowners will see the benefit of paying a 
living wage and will join our cause.
  Everyone deserves a job that allows them to make a living and 
provides them with the right to form a union. It is the economically 
sensible thing to do. You can ask any college or high school student 
who has taken Economics 101.
  When we empower workers to fight for themselves and provide them a 
big paycheck, our country becomes fairer and our economy grows. People 
who are working should not be living below the poverty line. So $15 an 
hour, that is the minimum that we should be paying our workers.
  Certain parts of the country, $15 an hour just barely, barely helps 
them put food on the table. So we need to get to a living wage, and we 
need to talk about what that means in different parts of the country.
  So I want to thank you, again, Congresswoman Watson Coleman, for your 
leadership, for bringing us together. We have got to stay focused on 
this because everyone deserves a path out of

[[Page H2258]]

poverty into the middle class. Everyone in our country deserves to live 
the American Dream.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I thank the gentlewoman from California for 
sharing her insights with us and the very important points that have 
been made.
  As I stated a moment ago, our economy relies upon consumers buying 
products that they want, not just products that they need. But $15 an 
hour is what we are trying to fight for, and even with that, that will 
barely provide the needs of these families.
  They can barely cover their rent or keep food on the table. They 
can't buy new cars and support the American auto industry. They can't 
afford new clothes, supporting American retailers, and they can't buy 
computers or smart phones, supporting Silicon Valley.
  Six out of the ten largest corporations with median wages of less 
than $15 also rank among the most occupations projected to add the most 
jobs in the coming years. And as the low-wage workforce grows, the 
declining purchasing power of Americans means that there is less demand 
for goods and services in the economy.

                              {time}  1815

  If we want to grow our economy, if we are focused on creating jobs, 
we need to support the people that do just that.
  I would like now to yield to my colleague from the great State of 
Texas, who stands up for working-class families every single solitary 
day and has even introduced legislation to secure a living wage for the 
families in our country.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Thank you very much. And I especially 
appreciate your remembering that I was reared in Florida. That is 
important to me. I now dwell in Texas, of course. But not many people 
remember that, so thank you so much. I am honored to be on the floor 
with you this evening.
  I think this is a very timely topic that we are having an opportunity 
to give some opinions on, and I think that it is important for us to 
remember that America is not a poor country. America is not a poor 
country, and I want to emphasize that because too often we come to 
conclusions about what we should do based upon our lack of resources. I 
think that is appropriate to come to conclusions based upon a lack of 
resources, but the truth is that we are still the richest country in 
the world.
  We are still the richest country in the world. As a matter of fact, 
in America, 1 in every 12 American households--1 in every 12--have 
investable assets of $1 million or more; 1 in 12 have investable assets 
of $1 million or more. As a matter of fact, in the United States of 
America, in 2013, we were fortunate enough to have the average CEO make 
$11.7 million. That is 331 times what the average worker made. The 
average worker made $35,293. So the average CEO did well.
  And by the way, I don't begrudge the CEO who makes $11-plus million. 
I do not. I believe in capitalism. I believe that in this country you 
should succeed on your merits or fail on your demerits. And if a CEO 
can make $11-plus million, I think that is great. I do think that that 
CEO ought to pay a fair amount of taxes, just as the person who makes 
$35,000-plus pays a fair amount of taxes. But I think it is a wonderful 
thing, $35,000 versus $11.7 million.
  Now, a full-time worker, a full-time worker, the average CEO that 
year made 774 times what a full-time minimum wage worker made--774 
times.
  We are in the richest country in the world; 1 in 12 households has 
investable assets of $1 million or more.
  In 2007, an interesting thing occurred. A man made $3 billion. I 
don't begrudge him. I salute him for making $3 billion. I don't envy 
him for making $3 billion. I commend him for making $3 billion. I would 
note, however, that he did not pay ordinary income tax on that $3 
billion. I think that if you are going to make $3 billion, you ought to 
pay your fair share of taxes on it.
  Mr. Speaker, $3 billion, that is a lot of money, and it is very 
difficult to get your mind around it. So let me help you understand 
what $3 billion is. It would take a minimum wage worker working full 
time 198,000 years--198,000 years--to make $3 billion. I don't begrudge 
the person who made the $3 billion. I salute him. That person made 
about $400 a second.
  This is the richest country in the world. People are making money in 
this country. Just because those of you who are at home, you don't know 
these people, I want you to know they are there. They are there, and 
they are doing quite well, and they ought to be the first in line to 
talk about raising the minimum wage.
  It would take 198,000 years for a minimum wage worker to make $3 
billion. A hedge fund manager made $400 a second. At $400 a second, it 
would take that hedge fund manager about 37.7 seconds to make what a 
minimum wage worker makes in a year--37.7 seconds. I don't begrudge 
him. I commend him. I salute him. But I do think he should pay a fair 
amount of taxes on it.
  I think that paying a fair amount of taxes is the American way. 
Others pay their taxes, a fair amount. I think people who make billions 
of dollars ought to pay a fair amount of taxes as well.
  When Dr. King gave his speech, when they had the March on Washington 
back in August of 1963, they had a list of 10 demands. Number eight on 
that list of 10 demands was to have a wage that people could make a 
living on. At that time, it was thought that $2 an hour would be a 
sufficient amount of money. Today we would call that a living wage. It 
was $2 an hour in 1963. Well, today, that $2 an hour would be about 
$14.90. So there is a rationale for the $15-an-hour hue and cry that we 
hear.
  A lot of things have changed. A lot of things have also remained the 
same. Fifteen dollars an hour is not an unreasonable amount of money in 
the richest country in the world, in a country where we have people who 
can make $400 a second, hundreds of times what a minimum wage worker 
makes, more than 700 times what a minimum wage worker working full time 
makes in a year.
  This is the richest country in the world. However, in the richest 
country in the world, we still have people who work full time and live 
below the poverty line.
  For edification purposes, I believe every person ought to work his or 
her way out of poverty. I would like to see subsidies ended and people 
have wages that will allow them to work their way out of poverty. If I 
had my way, we would have people without subsidies who work hard, 
succeed on their merits, fail on their demerits, and elevate themselves 
out of poverty by simply working full time and not living below the 
poverty line.
  It is interesting to note that, in 2015, the poverty threshold for a 
family of four is $28,850--for a family of four. I pray for the people 
who have to live off of that amount of money with a family of four, but 
that is what it is.
  I believe that we should not only raise the minimum wage, but we 
should index it. I think that we should index it to poverty because 
right now a full-time worker with a child makes about $15,080 a year. 
That is below the poverty line of $15,930 a year--working full time, 
living below the poverty line in the richest country in the world where 
at least one person made $400 a second, where the average CEO made more 
than $11 million a year. It seems to me that we are talking about 
trying to bring a balance between the CEO's salary and the workers'.
  At one time in this country there was a sense of moral responsibility 
that CEOs had for their workers. CEOs would literally sit and talk to 
the board of directors and talk about the needs of workers and how 
workers should be paid so that they could take care of families, so 
that they could educate children. There really was, at one time, this 
sense of moral responsibility to workers that CEOs had.
  I saw an example of that just today. A CEO decided that he was going 
to cut his salary so that his workers could have a better quality of 
life, with higher earnings that would be paid to them.
  We have a responsibility to each other in this country. We who happen 
to be blessed are not blessed so that we can just enjoy it all 
ourselves; we are blessed so that we may be a blessing to others. That 
sense of moral responsibility to those who are less fortunate than we 
has to return. If we don't get that sense of moral responsibility so 
that others can receive some of the blessings and some of the goodness 
of the richest country in the world, we do ourselves a disservice.

[[Page H2259]]

  Dr. King reminded us that life is an inescapable network of 
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What impacts one 
directly impacts all indirectly. What happens to people who are living 
below the poverty line directly will indirectly impact all of us.
  How does it happen? Well, here is how it happens:
  When they live below the poverty line and they are being paid a 
salary and they don't get health care, they are going to get health 
care in the richest country in the world. It is just that it is going 
to cost us a lot more. When they live below the poverty line and they 
are working full time, they are going to get subsidies. Taxpayers are 
going to take care of that.
  So there is an indirect impact on you, taxpayers, who are listening 
to me right now. You are paying for it. They are not getting it on the 
job. We are paying for it. We are subsidizing very wealthy people by 
paying a minimum wage on the job and then providing subsidies for 
people from the Federal Government such that they can have a decent 
living in the United States of America, the richest country in the 
world.
  What impacts others indirectly impacts all directly. Health care, 
food subsidies, this is all coming out of the pockets of taxpayers. Why 
not have a wage that allows people to take care of themselves?
  In this country, we tend for some reason to equate our net worth to 
our self-worth. That is unfortunate. We shouldn't do it, but a good 
many people do. A good many people do. And a good many people don't 
feel so good when they work full time and live below the poverty line, 
taking care of a family, playing by the rules.
  Some would say, well, that living wage, that minimum wage is just a 
wage that you start out with. It is just a wage for young people. The 
statistical information does not bear that out. Unfortunately, too many 
people find themselves in minimum wage jobs for more than just a few 
months.
  If you think about it, a good many of you who are listening to this, 
you know people who have been in minimum wage jobs for years and years 
and years. You know people who are doing their best to make ends meet 
at $7.25 an hour.
  This is the richest country in the world, and 1 in 12 American 
households have these assets that I have talked about, have these 
investable assets of $1 million or more. I think that in such a rich 
country we should be able to allow people who are willing to work--
willing to work; not people who are asking for a handout, but people 
who want to work, they want to earn their way through life--we ought to 
be able to pay them a decent wage.
  What we have in Congress would raise it to $10.10 an hour, far below 
what I think it should be; because I am of the opinion that it should 
be $15 an hour based on what Dr. King said in 1963 with that list of 10 
demands, number eight, which was to raise it to $2 an hour, which, by 
today's standards, is right at $15 an hour.

                              {time}  1830

  I think it should be 15, but I don't believe we will get 15 through 
the House, and I regret to say that. I support the bill that would 
raise it to $10.10 an hour.
  My bill, Mr. Speaker, the Original Living Wage Act, would raise it 
higher than $10.10 an hour and would index the minimum wage to poverty 
so that as the poverty rate goes up--at some period of time, I'm 
willing to negotiate what that period is--the minimum wage would go up, 
too; and we wouldn't find ourselves on the floor trying to debate what 
the minimum wage ought to be, as we are doing currently.
  I know that not everybody thinks that there should be a minimum wage 
at all. There are some people who think that market forces should 
control. Well, market forces have, in this circumstance, produced some 
very unpleasant circumstances for people who are working and trying to 
make ends meet on jobs that pay what we will call entry-level wages if 
we don't have a minimum wage.
  Mr. Speaker, I am of the opinion that we ought to raise the wage, and 
I think we ought to index it to poverty. The bill that seems to have 
more support, and I confess that it does, would index it to the CPI. I 
am not a hard person to get along with. I can live with indexing it to 
the CPI, but I do think that it should be indexed, and I do think that 
we should raise it.
  I say this to you, my dear friends, because Dr. King, who was so far 
ahead of his time--so far ahead of his time--was the preeminent fighter 
for those who live in the streets of life and those who are trying to 
eke out a living on little, who have learned how to take very little 
and do a lot with it, Dr. King was a fighter and a champion for these 
folk.
  I think that as we continue to celebrate the anniversary of his 
birthday--now, he is being recognized on the Mall, there is a statue on 
the Mall--I think we ought to go further and recognize what he asked 
for in 1963, and that was a living wage. I think that it is time for us 
to honor the request of Dr. King which has not, to this date, been 
honored; and let us let everybody work his or her way out of poverty.
  I thank you so much for this great opportunity to speak, and I pray 
that you will continue to be strong and carry on. You have done a 
stellar job. What you are doing now, you don't do for yourself. What 
you do now, you do for people you will never meet and greet, people 
that will never get to touch your hand, but they will be blessed by 
what you are doing to help them elevate themselves to a better standard 
of living.
  God bless you, my dear sister, and I pray that you will continue to 
be strong and continue to carry on.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Congressman, it has been an honor to share this 
moment with you in this Special Order hour. It has been a blessing to 
me. Texas is very, very lucky and very fortunate to have you as a 
Representative. Florida must be very proud because you were born there.
  Thank you, and God bless you.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. God bless you, too.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Westerman). The gentlewoman has 15 
minutes remaining.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on something 
that my colleague had alluded to, and that is the impact of low wages 
and the government's need to subsidize. I think that he sort of spoke 
to it in a generalized way, but I would like to just share with you 
what I think happens with an individual and a family that has a $15,000 
income.
  Since it is not enough to keep food on the table, those Americans 
have to turn to food stamps. Since the jobs don't come with health 
care, we have got to rely on Medicaid. Because $15,000 a year doesn't 
pay for the rent in most cities, those Americans rely on low-income 
housing or subsidized housing through Section 8 vouchers, or they are 
homeless and living in shelters.
  These workers' children are enrolled in children's health insurance 
programs, and these families are getting support through Temporary 
Assistance to Needy Families, the TANF program.
  Fifty-two percent of fast-food workers rely on public assistance 
programs; 46 percent of childcare workers rely on public assistance; 48 
percent of home care workers rely on public assistance; and, Mr. 
Speaker, 25 percent of part-time college faculty--highly educated 
adjunct professors--rely on public assistance.
  According to a Berkeley report, the Federal Government spent $127.8 
billion on working families in these programs. California spent almost 
$3.7 billion because of low-wage workers; New York, $3.3 billion; 
Texas, $2.1 billion; and Illinois and Florida both spent a little more 
than a billion.
  This isn't funding for Americans that are uncharacteristically down 
on their luck or temporarily out of work or in some other moment of 
crisis. This money is spent on full-time, hard-working Americans who 
simply are working for corporations who maximize the CEO's benefits at 
the expense of the workers' salaries.
  Mr. Speaker, if my Republican colleagues are so adamant about 
reducing government spending, shouldn't we be worried about why these 
folks are trying to work full-time but still need food stamps to make 
ends meet?
  We have also spent a lot of time in this Congress debating tax breaks 
for the wealthy and for corporations. In fact, earlier this afternoon, 
we argued about whether or not the 5,000 or so

[[Page H2260]]

wealthiest families in this country, the only people who have enough 
money in their estates to qualify for the estate tax, should get a $2.5 
million tax break.
  Every year, we let corporations deduct unlimited amounts of bonus pay 
for executives, regardless of whether or not the companies' workers get 
pay raises or not, unlike that one special CEO who sees life 
differently and believes that to whom much is given much is required.
  Corporations have written off $66 billion between 2007 and 2010 while 
letting the low-wage workers who make up the rank and file of their 
companies struggle.
  My colleague, Chris Van Hollen, has a solution for this, requiring 
companies to raise wages for their workers if they want to keep 
qualifying for that tax break. It is a simple solution that wouldn't 
mean companies suddenly have to raise pay for their workers; they just 
need to stop expecting the government to cover the exorbitant salaries 
of their executives if they can't pay the rest of their employees a 
liveable wage.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I stand with the millions of workers 
fighting for 15. Lifting pay for low-wage workers will boost their 
purchasing power, pumping more money into our economy and giving 
businesses the revenue to create more jobs.
  Lifting pay for low-wage workers will reduce government spending. 
Lifting pay for low-wage workers will open the doors to the American 
Dream for the millions who have already demonstrated that they are 
ready and willing to work and to work hard for it.
  By standing together and fighting for the $15, these workers have 
already made their voices heard in the living rooms, the boardrooms, 
and the statehouses all across this country. It is time for D.C. to 
lend an ear as well.
  It is my privilege and my honor to stand with those who are simply 
seeking a fair wage for the work that they do.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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