[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 121 (Thursday, July 18, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4938-S4939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              The Economy

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, just another day on Wall Street and just 
another news story. The New York Times' headline today was ``Big Banks 
Are Earning Billions of Dollars. Trump's Tax Cuts Are A Big Reason.''
  So Congress can continue to do tax cuts for Wall Street. Congress can 
continue to weaken rules on Wall Street. Congress has forgotten. They 
have this collective amnesia about what happened 10 years ago when this 
country's economy almost imploded because of Wall Street greed. So now 
Congress--because of the tax cut and because of continued relaxation of 
Wall Street financial stability safety rules, Wall Street is doing 
really well again.
  However, Congress can't pass an overtime bill--I mean, sorry. 
Congress can't pass a minimum wage bill. The last minimum wage increase 
in this Congress was signed by President Bush in 2007. President Obama 
never did it, and President Trump continues to oppose a minimum wage 
increase.
  President Trump has rolled back an overtime rule, which in the State 
of Indiana--the Presiding Officer's State--almost 100,000 workers were 
going to get a raise because of the overtime rule we passed a couple 
years ago. So people, if they work more than 40 hours, they ought to 
get paid for more than 40 hours--President Trump rolled that back--and 
130,000 workers in my State alone would have gotten a big bump in their 
wages because they were working 45, 50, or 60 hours a week.
  This Congress will not pass an infrastructure bill. Look at the 
conditions of the roads in Cleveland, Toledo, Mansfield, Findlay, 
Akron, Youngstown, Gallipolis, Chillicothe, and Portsmouth, in my 
State, and all kinds of communities in Indiana, which the Presiding 
Officer represents. Congress can always find the time and can always 
find the money to help the richest 1 percent and help the big banks, 
but we can't turn around and do what

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we ought to do on the minimum wage, what we ought to do on the overtime 
rule, and what we ought to do to expand the earned income tax credit. I 
do appreciate the Presiding Officer's interest, especially in the 
earned income tax credit--what he has tried to do there. We just simply 
can't find the time to do that.
  We always help the people who have much in this society, and we just 
never get around, in this Congress, to helping the people who need a 
break.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Braun). The Senator from Texas.