[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25392-25393]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     ON INCREASING THE MINIMUM WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, in the few minutes allocated to 
me this evening, I want to address one of the most significant issues 
this Congress faces this year, a subject worthy of hours of 
exploration, discussion and debate: the need to increase the Federal 
minimum wage.
  Madam Speaker, I could talk about how the average American worker now 
produces about 12 percent more in an hour's work than he or she did in 
1989, but, after adjusting for inflation, that worker's wages have only 
increased 1.9 percent. But time does not permit us to examine this very 
basic question.
  I could talk about how an increase in the minimum wage helps to 
convert low wage, dead-end jobs into decent jobs with wages to support 
a family, thereby reducing turnover and building worker loyalty and 
productivity. But I really do not have the time to do that, either.
  We might speak about the role of the minimum wage in creating a truly 
national labor market and creating a level playing field for working 
men and women regardless of so-called State right-to-work laws and 
other anti-union legislation. We could look at the harm and distortions 
of our economy brought about by our failure to maintain the minimum 
wage. But that would take much more time than the few moments that I 
have this evening.
  We could talk about how, without an increase, the real value of the 
minimum wage would fall to $4.90 an hour by the year 2000 according to 
inflation projections by the Congressional Budget Office.
  We could talk about how 59 percent of workers on minimum wage are 
women and how women desperately need an increase in the minimum wage to 
rectify growing female wage inequality.
  We could talk about how African Americans make up 11.6 percent of the 
workforce but 15.1 percent of those affected by an increase in the 
minimum wage. How Hispanics make up 10.6 percent of the workforce but 
17.4 percent of those affected by an increase in the minimum wage. We 
could talk about the need for justice for these working families.
  And we could talk about the pain, the anguish, the agony, the 
frustration of 11.8 million workers, more than 10 percent of the 
workforce, who live on minimum wage, 504,000 workers in Illinois alone 
who try and survive on minimum wage dollars. But it would be impossible 
to adequately describe that pain, that anguish, that agony in just a 
few minutes.
  We could explode the myth, the great bogey man, of those opposed to 
raising the minimum wage that increases in the minimum wage reduce the 
number of minimum wage jobs and hurt low-income workers, especially 
youth. The 1999 Levy Institute survey of small businesses and 60 years 
of other studies which focus on facts, not tired old dogmas, show, 
contrary to the common supposition that youth and students are hurt, 
minimum wage increases actually shift employment to them, especially in 
the fast food industry. As one commentator said in this regard, ``Our 
facts trump your theories.''
  We could talk about applying minimum wage theories to TANF activities 
and the positive effects on families

[[Page 25393]]

and public budgets. Or we could talk about how our big cities, whose 
population of poverty is some 20 percent as opposed to 8 percent in 
suburban communities, are forced to bear a huge and disproportionate 
share of public costs of dealing with poverty, and how even an increase 
of $1 an hour in the minimum wage would impact that burden.
  Census numbers released in September show that while the poverty 
rates are declining, the number of full-time workers with incomes below 
the poverty line rose by 459,000 in 1998. The numbers show that more 
than one in every three black and Hispanic children remain poor. The 
numbers show that poor families are poorer on average than a few years 
ago.
  Madam Speaker, we could talk for hours, but it is clear that even Sy 
Plukas knows what all of America knows and demands, that it is only 
right, it is only justice, it is only fair, it is in the interest of 
all America, it is essential, it is critical to act now, this month, to 
raise the minimum wage by at least $1 per hour.

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