[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6992-6998]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        SHARING THE PROSPERITY OF AMERICA WITH WORKING FAMILIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about the need to 
share the current wealth and prosperity of America with working 
families.
  In 1989, the value of the stock market was $3 trillion. Ten years 
later, today in 1999, the value of the stocks in all the exchanges is 
$13 trillion. From $3 trillion to $13 trillion, that is what the 
increased value of the stock market has been. That is quite an 
overwhelming increase in wealth.
  Madam Speaker, we enjoy unprecedented prosperity today, so I would 
like to talk about how this prosperity and wealth should be shared with 
workers. Instead of attacking working families, we need to find ways to 
reward working families and to share this wealth.
  There are many ways to share the wealth and prosperity of the Nation 
at this point. Certainly I do not propose that we do what the Roman 
Empire did. At one point the Roman Empire was so wealthy as a result of 
its conquests, its taxation policies on its oppressed victims, defeated 
nations around it, that it had so much money that it decreed that every 
Roman citizen would be paid each year a certain amount of money out of 
the Treasury. That was real sharing.
  I do not think it succeeded for very long because once the word got 
out that every Roman citizen could share in the booty and they would 
pay them part of the accumulated wealth of the Nation, all the people 
in the surrounding countryside moved into Rome. In large numbers, they 
filled up Rome, and that policy was brought down by the sheer weight of 
numbers.
  Madam Speaker, I do not think we should ever try to repeat anything 
of that kind; however, I think that we can share the wealth of the 
Nation with working families by improving health care and making 
certain that every American citizen has decent health care. I think we 
can share the prosperity and the wealth of the Nation by making certain 
that education is available for every American citizen.
  The children of working families, for example, are the children who 
go to public schools. They have no alternative. So our public system of 
education which, by the way, has 54 million enrolled pupils, that 
system should be given as much help as possible by all sectors of our 
economy, governmental and private as well.
  So education, health care, I think if you improve those things, it 
would be two ways to share the wealth with working families.
  There is another very concrete and direct way to share the wealth 
with working families, and that is to share the dollars. The best way 
to help somebody who is poor is to give them money directly. Dollars in 
the hands of the poor are the most efficient and effective way to deal 
with poverty. So, instead of attacking the working families, as some of 
our present Republican legislation is seeking to do, let us have a 
bipartisan coalition on helping working families by raising the minimum 
wage. Let us raise the minimum wage and put some dollars in the pockets 
of working families, and they can put food on the table, better 
clothes, better housing and take care of themselves.
  We do not have that spirit here in this Congress. I appreciate the 
fact that we do not have a situation similar to the one that existed 
just a little more than 2 years ago in the 105th Congress. The 105th 
Congress started out with a set of direct assaults on working families. 
We had direct assaults, and we came on with the very first bill of the 
year. The very first bill in the 105th Congress was H.R. 1, which was 
designed to take away the cash overtime payments from working families.
  Madam Speaker, that may seem like ancient history now, but it was on 
a roller coaster in the first debates of the 105th Congress. It was on 
a roller coaster because it had support from the White House, it had 
support from the majority of the Democrats, a bill which said we will 
not pay workers any more in cash overtime, we will force them to take 
comp time, and the comp time has to be taken at the discretion of the 
employer.
  I pointed out, in fact, that what the workers needed was the cash, 
extra cash that the overtime provided, more than anything else. An 
argument was offered that, well, there are a lot of professionals and 
middle-class people who would like to have the option of having time 
off instead of more cash. I pointed out at that time that we in no way, 
the Fair Labor Standards Act does not really interfere with people 
having time off instead of cash. There are ways to deal with that if 
people prefer that voluntarily.
  But what they were doing by mandating that the Fair Labor Standards

[[Page 6993]]

Act be changed was mandating that every worker had to accept the 
situation where time off would be at the discretion of the employer and 
no cash. I pointed out at that time that two-thirds of the people in 
America who worked for a living, wage earners, two-thirds made less 
than $10 an hour, less than $10 an hour, and I said: Let those two-
thirds who make less than $10 an hour be exempted from your proposed 
legislation which would mandate time off instead of overtime. And it 
did get a few votes on the floor, my amendment, but it did not pass.
  However, thank God, the forces of common sense were at work all the 
time, and what seemed like a steamrolling proposition in the early days 
of the 105th Congress petered out. The labor unions got moving, the 
common sense of the average worker out there got moving, public opinion 
became involved, and the whole concept of forcing a change in the Fair 
Labor Standards Act to require comp time instead of overtime and cash 
just disappeared. I am very appreciative of the fact that we do not 
hear any more about it.
  There are some other frontal attacks on working families that we do 
not hear about this year, and I am glad we do not hear them any more. 
There were frontal attacks on OSHA to merely wipe out the agency, 
reduce the budget by two-thirds.

                              {time}  1945

  OSHA takes care of the health and safety of workers. The Occupational 
Safety and Health Administration is there to take care of providing 
safe workplaces. There were attacks which said that OSHA was 
threatening American industry, that business could not survive if OSHA 
continued to exist.
  These attacks persisted despite the fact that many of us pointed out 
the fact that OSHA staff had been so reduced that in my lifetime it was 
not likely that a business would be visited. It takes a cycle of more 
than 100 years for the inspectors to get around to visiting those 
businesses out there to examine the conditions to see if they meet OSHA 
standards.
  So OSHA was not a gestapo like agency with numerous staff members to 
come down on business. That was not true. That frontal attack has 
ceased, and we are grateful for that.
  There was also an attack on the unions and their ability to use their 
funds for any political purposes. It was called the Paycheck Protection 
Act. The Paycheck Protection Act was really going for the jugular vein. 
Wipe out the ability of unions to speak for their members, cut it off 
completely and if it could not be won at the Federal level there were 
also movements in the States fomented and encouraged by the leadership 
of the Republican majority here in the House.
  The Paycheck Protection Act is no longer being discussed this year. 
We are grateful that working families do not have to worry about losing 
their voice in the political arena. That is no longer a problem.
  Then there were the attacks on Davis-Bacon that came loud and 
frequently. Davis-Bacon was being attacked relentlessly, although as I 
often point out Davis and Bacon were two Republicans who devised a 
system for protecting workers in situations where large Federal 
contracts were involved. They did not want the wages of the local areas 
to be eroded by having these large contractors come in and bring 
outside workers in to do the work at lower wages. So it was common 
sense built in all the way from the beginning.
  These frontal assaults, the constant unrelenting attempt to batter 
down the protections for working families, are not happening here in 
the 106th Congress.
  I serve as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee for Workforce 
Protections of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and I know 
that at the committee level and the subcommittee level we are getting a 
guerilla attack. Guerilla ambushes have replaced the frontal assault. 
Not the same amount of noise is being made. They do not rush these 
items to the floor and expect immediate endorsements and passage, but 
there is a slow chipping away at the protections for working families.
  Working families are still in danger in this Republican controlled 
Congress. Working families still have to fear a bush whacking, a quiet 
assault, an ambush, in a number of areas. I say that I want to call on 
this 106th Congress, where all of us, most of us, subscribe to the 
notion that we are more civil and would like to have a bipartisan 
approach to certain issues, let us have a bipartisan approach to 
rewarding working families.
  Working families make up the majority of America out there. Working 
families need better health care. They need decent education. They need 
more help from the Federal Government for education. First of all, 
working families need dollars in their pockets, and we can do that by 
increasing the minimum wage.
  Increasing the minimum wage is what I want to talk most about. It is 
all integrally interwoven. We need to increase the minimum wage and the 
minimum wage is where there are entry level workers who are now making 
$5.15 an hour. We have proposed to raise that by fifty cents in one 
year. That is the President's proposal, fifty cents in one year and 
then another fifty cents another year, which means a dollar increase 
over a 2-year period. It will not make anybody rich. People who are 
making $10,000 a year would be making a little more than $12,000 a year 
after we raise the minimum wage.
  A lot of people have a lot of questions about whether the minimum 
wage really is important because, after all, most Americans are not 
making minimum wage. I am going to show some statistics, recent 
statistics, in a few minutes, to let everyone know that quite a number 
of Americans still make minimum wage and there are a lot who make below 
minimum wage, that are working every day for wages below minimum wage 
because minimum wage is not mandated for the smallest business. There 
are a number of situations where minimum wage does not impact.
  So instead of attacks on working families, I propose that we move 
forward in a bipartisan effort to reward working families by increasing 
the minimum wage.
  At a town meeting that I had just last night, where there were quite 
a number of people who came out, people are very concerned about a 
number of items, a number of Federal actions that are being taken. At 
the top of the list, of course, is Kosovo and what is going to happen 
with Kosovo and the intervention of our American forces along with 
NATO; will we send in ground troops or will they appropriate more money 
for the effort and in the process of appropriating more money for the 
war effort will we downgrade the efforts to improve Medicare by having 
something added to Medicare which will cover prescription drugs; will 
we downgrade our efforts to improve the education system and say that 
we have no money because this war effort is going to absorb all the 
resources? Those are very important questions and people are very 
concerned about that.
  By the way, I asked for a show of hands in an audience of about 200 
people as to was there support for the present actions in Kosovo, the 
bombing of Kosovo, to stop the dictator Milosevic, Slobodan Milosevic, 
which I call a sovereign predator, responsible for unspeakable horrors 
in that area of the country, was there support for the present action 
that the United States was taking along with its NATO allies. 
Practically every hand in the house went up supporting it. The 
overwhelming majority, 95 percent of the people, supported taking 
action.
  However, I might point out that when I asked how many would support 
escalating the combat effort, escalating the effort to the use of 
ground troops, I had just the opposite reaction. Only about 5 percent 
raised their hands. I think that is very informative.
  To get back to today's subject, their primary concerns, or I might 
not say primary but equal to Kosovo were concerns about Social Security 
and concerns about Medicare and concerns about education. These are all 
things that are very important to working families. When we help to 
improve education, we are improving a lot of working families.

[[Page 6994]]

  The public school system that is being attacked by a lot of people in 
the majority, the Republican majority, they want to replace the public 
school system with a privatized system. They want vouchers to replace 
Federal aid to education. They want to give up on the public school 
system. As I said before, there are 54 million students in the public 
school system. Fifty-four million students are enrolled.
  Only a small percentage of our population of school-age students 
attend private schools today and if we were to make some kind of effort 
to greatly increase the funding for private schools, it would still be 
a very slow process of moving more and more of our youngsters into 
private schools. So just logistically and statistically, not much help 
is going to come in the near future from a private school effort or 
from giving vouchers and sending working family children off to find a 
private school. So any attacks on public education are also attacks on 
working families.
  One might want to know that the Federal Government does not do very 
much for these 54 million children out there in public schools. Our 
expenditure for elementary and secondary education presently is about 
$22 billion a year. The annual expenditure for elementary and secondary 
education is about $22 billion. Our current expenditure for highways 
and transportation is $51 billion, to let everyone see what the 
contrast is. We are spending only $22 billion for education but $51 
billion for highways.
  I use that example because a lot of people continue to confront me 
with the issue of local control and say that it is not the Federal 
Government's business to worry about education. It is not the Federal 
Government's business to be involved in education. They ask, why would 
I want to saddle the Federal Government with responsibilities in the 
area of education?
  Well, let me ask this: Is it the Federal Government's responsibility 
to be involved in roads and highways? That was always a local 
responsibility. Highways and roads were for States and local 
governments to take care of. Nothing in the Constitution gives the 
Federal Government the responsibility for maintaining the highways and 
the roads, but now we are at the point where we currently are spending 
$51 billion.
  Last year we had the biggest expenditure in history for highways and 
transportation approved. That expenditure will be about $218 billion 
over a 6-year period, $218 billion over a 6-year period. Contrast that 
with what the President is proposing to spend for school construction. 
Over a 5-year period he is proposing to spend $3.7 billion to pay the 
interest on $25 billion worth of loans that the local governments and 
the State governments will have to make for education. So the contrast 
is overwhelming.
  These are children of working families who go to the public schools. 
School construction would be an initiative to help working family 
children.
  People say that inner cities do not deserve to be given priority for 
education funding and we should take away the Title I money and put it 
into ed-flex and let the governors and the local decisionmakers spend 
the money for anything they want to related to education. Do not 
concentrate on the original purpose of Title I. The original purpose of 
the Federal Government's involvement in education was to help the 
poorer communities. Forget about that. They do not deserve that. There 
are Democrats who say that we should not have a construction bill, a 
school construction bill which gives first priority to the cities. 
Well, we give first priorities to the inner cities because that is 
where most of the children are. Most of the population of America lives 
in the big cities.
  When it comes time to fight wars, most of the people who go off to 
die are the young people from big cities. If one goes to the Vietnam 
Memorial wall they will find that the wall is full of people who come 
from the big cities and it is full of the children from working 
families. Children from working families went out to die in World War I 
and World War II and children from working families died in Vietnam. If 
we have a war in Kosovo that expands to a ground war, the majority of 
those who would die in combat will be from working families in big 
cities.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I wanted to come down here to the Floor of 
the House to compliment the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), my 
fine colleague, for his special order this evening.
  Madam Speaker, I was listening to the gentleman in my office and I 
was motivated to come down here when he was talking about the minimum 
wage and the struggle of people from our country to earn a decent 
living.
  I wanted to engage the gentleman in a colloquy, if I might, based on 
a speech that was made over the weekend and reported in the gentleman's 
home city of New York City by none other than the chairman of the 
Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.
  The story was reported in my local paper back home, the Toledo Blade, 
because he was talking about workers in our country and saying that, 
and I quote from the article, ``pockets of workers in America sometimes 
have to suffer for the national economy to get stronger.'' It was very 
interesting and, Madam Speaker, I would like to include that article 
for the Record at this point.
   Madam Speaker, I ordered a copy of his speech today, and I have read 
it, because he was speaking to a group in Texas and he was talking 
about NAFTA. He was talking about how successful it has been.
  I was very interested in the gentleman's remarks on minimum wage 
because Mr. Greenspan, in his speech, argues that international trade 
has lifted the standard of living of people in this country. I guess I 
wanted the gentleman to comment whether it is his view that some of the 
trade arrangements that we have locked ourselves into have been 
beneficial to the standard of living and to working families' incomes 
in this Nation. From what the gentleman was saying about the minimum 
wage, something is not working here.
  Obviously, all boats are not being lifted. What was interesting to me 
about Mr. Greenspan's remarks, in fact, when he said who had to suffer 
as a result of our trade agreements, he only said workers. He did not 
say shareholders. He did not say chief executive officers. He did not 
say executive assistants. He did not say managers.

                [From the Toledo Blade, April 17, 1999]

Greenspan Contradicts U.S. Trade View--Competition is the Goal, He says

       Washington (NYT).--Alan Greenspan waded into the debate 
     over trade policy yesterday, denouncing protectionist 
     pressures and arguing that pockets of workers sometimes have 
     to suffer for the national economy to get stronger.
       The Federal Reserve chairman did not address the biggest 
     question on the trade agenda, the possible entry of China 
     into the World Trade Organization. But he outlined a broad 
     case for eliminating trade barriers and warned that attempts 
     to halt the development of a more global economy are futile 
     and harmful.
       Mr. Greenspan's influence could help the Clinton 
     administration as it seeks to complete a deal with China and 
     win congressional approval for the pact.
       But Mr. Greenspan criticized the administration for framing 
     the benefits of trade in what he called the wrong way. The 
     point of expanding trade is not to create jobs, Mr. Greenspan 
     said, contradicting the President's main argument for why the 
     United States should open new markets.
       Rather, Mr. Greenspan said, trade forces the United States 
     to become more competitive, and to use its resources--people, 
     technology and money--in the most productive way.
       The Fed chairman took the administration and Congress to 
     task for taking what he called an overly narrow view of trade 
     relations.
       ``I am concerned about the recent weakening of support for 
     free trade in this country,'' Mr. Greenspan said in a speech 
     to business executives and foreign ambassadors in Dallas.
       ``Should we endeavor to freeze competitive progress in 
     place, we will almost certainly slow economic growth overall 
     and impart substantial harm to those workers who would 
     otherwise seek more effective long-term job opportunities,'' 
     he said.
       Mr. Greenspan spoke after 10 days of debate within the 
     administration and throughout Washington over how hard to 
     push for a deal that would put China under the international 
     rules of trade.

[[Page 6995]]

       Last week, Mr. Clinton backed away from a deal with China's 
     prime minister, Zhu Rongji, despite sweeping concessions from 
     the Chinese on a variety of trade issues. Mr. Clinton 
     concluded that he would not be able to win approval from 
     Congress because lawmakers are unhappy with China over 
     accusations that it has violated human rights, spread nuclear 
     weapons, and spied on American weapon programs.
       But after criticism from business leaders, Mr. Clinton 
     restarted talks with China.

                              {time}  2000

  My own view, and perhaps the gentleman would want to comment on this, 
if we look at our trade deficit with Mexico, now nearly $16 billion a 
year, making more down there than we are able to sell. They ship their 
goods here, we do not get as much down there, their people cannot 
afford to buy; our people lose jobs.
  China, which is an issue we are going to be discussing here, $50 
billion, $60 billion in trade deficits. The poor workers in China are 
making 10 cents an hour, and yet we have the downward ratcheting of 
wages and benefits in this country, which force us to come to the floor 
here to ask for an increase in the minimum wage.
  I just wanted to come down to the floor and to introduce this news 
article where Mr. Greenspan contradicts U.S. trade views and criticizes 
Congress. I am mystified why we might be concerned. I thought the 
gentleman might want to add something to his earlier remarks.
  Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate the gentlewoman from 
Ohio joining me because she has studied this situation very closely 
over a long period of time and has a great deal of knowledge and 
institutional memory as to how we have progressed to the present 
situation.
  I think the gentlewoman will sympathize with me when I say any 
country which is earning in its stock markets $13 trillion in 1999 
versus $3 trillion in 1989, has seen a $10 trillion increase over a 10-
year period, why are they worried about the economy faltering and why 
must that keep going on the backs of workers? We certainly have no 
danger; if we raise the minimum wage or if we were to pay workers 
better and create more jobs, that $13 trillion cannot be threatened, or 
if it wavers a bit and goes down to $12 trillion, what is the 
difference?
  So I had to restrain myself because when I began, our colleagues from 
the other side had just finished talking about Mexico and the drug 
trade, and NAFTA came to mind right away. We should have disapproved of 
NAFTA just for the reason that the Government of Mexico is overwhelmed 
by the drug trade and that any kinds of laws that we try to enforce 
there are impossible. We cannot enforce laws that require trade unions 
to have freedom. We cannot enforce laws on the environment. We cannot 
enforce laws which would maintain decent minimum wages and working 
conditions.
  Then, when we move to China, China overnight has an overwhelming 
balance of trade with us, and it is obscene, the amount of the surplus 
with China in their favor at this point. They not only employ people at 
low wages, they use prison labor. I heard just this past weekend a 
manufacturer of toys who openly said that it is manufacturing in the 
prisons of China. We do not want anything to do with that; do not ask 
me any questions about it. I do not care what it manufactures, we get a 
much cheaper price.
  So the workers here are directly threatened by that kind of activity 
in Mexico and in China, and of course the people who benefit are the 
ones who reap tremendous profits by bringing the very cheap goods in 
here and selling them at prices that are more consistent with our 
standard of living and reaping the profit. That is where the $13 
trillion versus $3 trillion has been accumulated.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would just yield to me 
for one more minute, I would say that Mr. Greenspan seems to think that 
all trade raises the standard of living of the American people. It 
might raise the standard of living of people who can afford to take him 
out to lunch or dinner along Wall Street in New York City or K Street 
here in Washington, D.C., but it has not raised the wages of the people 
that the gentleman from New York is talking about here, where we in 
Congress have to forcibly ratchet up the minimum wage because people 
are being told where they work here in the United States, well, if you 
want any kind of a small wage increase, or maybe you want better health 
insurance or health insurance at all, if you do not agree to that, we 
are going to Mexico. I do not understand why an intelligent person like 
Mr. Greenspan cannot feel the pain and understand the impact of these 
trade agreements on the vast majority of the American public that has 
not benefited from the big bang on Wall Street.
  The average wages of people in this country and their real buying 
power has not been going up. They are working; thank God we have done 
some things right in this country, but they are not able to meet 
prices.
  The other day I went to get a blouse back home, and I walked up to 
this one rack and I pulled it off the rack and I looked at it, it was 
$129 made in China. And Mr. Greenspan says in his speeches here that 
this trade is great for America because we get all these cheap goods. 
Where? Where are the cheap goods? All the garment workers in the 
gentleman's city who lost their jobs who were making not great wages, 
but at least they could keep house and home together, when those jobs 
were wiped out and replaced by Chinese jobs, I really do not see how he 
can say this helps the standard of living of the ordinary rank and 
file, the majority of people in this country. It certainly helps those 
who trade in stocks on Wall Street, would the gentleman not agree?
  Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, the $129 blouse probably cost less than $10 
to make.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I know.
  Mr. OWENS. So large profits are reaped by somebody, and that is where 
the $13 trillion has been accumulated, a $10 trillion increase over the 
last 10 years. That is obscene when we look at the fact that 40 million 
people are not covered with any kind of health care and we are nickel 
and diming our education system in terms of support from the Federal 
Government, and on and on it goes.
  Mr. Greenspan insulted all working people previously by saying that 
unemployment is good for the economy, and the last thing we wanted was 
to have full employment. It is ridiculous to allow these icons to go on 
unchallenged, but as the gentlewoman and I know, we are lucky that 
lightning has not come down and struck both of us for criticizing Mr. 
Greenspan. The power structure wants Mr. Greenspan. The President keeps 
reappointing Mr. Greenspan, the majority of Republicans want Mr. 
Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan is no friend of working families, and there is 
a philosophy, and a lot of people in decision-making positions who are 
not friends of working families. We are missing a golden opportunity in 
America to have the working families share the prosperity, and it would 
be good for the entire country to have them share it.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, would the gentleman, who has been such a 
leader on education, allow me just to say this, because I do not know 
of any member of the gentleman's committee that has fought as hard for 
education as the gentleman has in his tenure here in this Congress, and 
the American people owe you a debt of gratitude for that.
  What is very interesting to me in our area of Ohio and around the 
Midwest, many companies that used to pay taxes for education and used 
to help schools, got abatement, tax abatement over the last 20 years, 
and now what is happening is educational systems across this country 
are faltering at the local level and asking the Congress to appropriate 
money in order to help for school construction. The President of the 
United States a couple of months ago was up here asking for money for 
school construction. This is a shift in priorities of the Federal 
Government to move into school modernization and construction.
  One of the reasons this is happening is that locally, these very same 
companies that have gotten abatement and are cutting back on their 
public responsibilities are then shifting that

[[Page 6996]]

burden up to the Federal Government where we have a lot of other 
responsibilities, and it is very interesting to me that the gentleman 
has to fight for dollars for education, dear dollars that we need for 
curriculum, for instruction, for making up the differential between 
lower income districts and higher income districts, and yet now we also 
have to fund buildings. It is amazing to me how much foregone tax 
revenue there is at the local level. Just another example of corporate 
America not meeting its public responsibilities.
  I would wish for the Federal Reserve to do a study on that.
  Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, as soon as the tax abatement run out for 
many of these companies, they are going to leave the gentlewoman's 
State and go to Mexico or somewhere else.
  This is a great argument; of course, I do not like to see the Federal 
Government be forced to assume new responsibilities, but it is a great 
argument for the Federal Government assuming more responsibilities for 
school construction, because the wealth is in the country. It is not in 
the counties, as it was before, but it is somewhere in the country when 
we see the $13 trillion stock market value. Let the Federal Government 
take part of that wealth and use it to build schools across the 
country. It did not apply 20 years ago; it was not necessary 20 or 25 
years ago, but it is necessary now.
  What is wrong with safeguarding the national interests by seeing to 
it that we have adequate schools and school construction is one of 
those areas where it is most intense in terms of capital. School 
systems are struggling for operating budgets to keep the right number 
of teachers and suppliers and all of the other expenses going. Surely, 
a one-shot expenditure on a massive scale to deal with the fact that 
the General Accounting Office says we need about, in 1995, we needed 
about $110 billion just to repair schools that needed repair and to 
build, to keep up with the current enrollment in 1995, and now we need 
much more.
  So we need a massive injection, similar to the highway bill 
injection. When we need big money for a purpose that people see day-to-
day in having some applicability, then let us spend the money there 
instead of wasting it in other places, and school construction is one 
of those places where it is needed.
  I think the Federal Government expenditure right now for elementary 
and secondary education is about $415 per child per year. That is our 
involvement. Most of the cost of education is still borne by State and 
local governments. We could afford to have an infusion, a one-shot, 
one-time set of expenditures for construction and let the Federal 
Government then get out and leave it to the States on an ongoing basis.
  I sympathize when some people say the Federal Government should not 
interfere with education at the local level. Well, if we build schools, 
we are not interfering with curriculum and procedures and processes, we 
are just helping to build schools and then getting out and leaving it 
to the local government. That is an area where we should be involved. 
Of course, as I said before, most of those schools are for working 
families who cannot afford the alternative in terms of private schools. 
No matter how we play around with that, most working families are going 
to have to send their children to public schools.
  Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for bringing more light on 
this subject.
  The minimum wage right now is $5.15 an hour. That comes out to 
$10,000, $10,300 for a worker who works 50 weeks in a year, $10,300 per 
year. Let that sink in and let people understand that two-thirds of the 
workforce makes less than $20,000 a year. I did this research when I 
was fighting the bill which required people to take time off instead of 
receiving overtime. Two-thirds of the workforce is at the level where 
they are making only $10 an hour. Two-thirds of the workforce in 
America are making only $20,000 a year, twice the minimum wage at this 
point. That is two-thirds of those who earn a living as wage-earners.
  The Fair Labor Standards Act of course was amended, and the minimum 
wage, on September 30, 1996 it was raised to $4.75 an hour, and then 
September 1, 1997 it was raised to $5.15 an hour. That was when we had 
the last increases. Of course at that time we also had to bear an 
amendment which was called the Opportunity Wage Provision. The 
Republican majority insisted that workers under age 20 can be paid 
$4.25 an hour for the first 90 consecutive calendar days after they are 
hired. That was a compromise that I did not care for, but we had to 
make that in order to get the bill passed.
  Now, people say that well, most workers are already above the minimum 
wage; they do not have to worry about that. But 1.6 million workers 
were paid by the hour at hourly wages of $5.15 in 1998. Madam Speaker, 
2.8 million workers were making less than that. Some workers are paid 
below the minimum wage because, as I said before, because of the 
provision for youth workers, and then there are small businesses that 
are exempted from the minimum wage, very small businesses exempted.
  Over the last 30 years, how has the minimum wage kept pace with 
inflation? I just said before that in 10 years, the stock market value 
went from $3 trillion to $13 trillion. Now, do we have any kind of 
overwhelming increase like that with the minimum wage? No. From 1961 to 
1981, the real value of the minimum wage was above $6 an hour every 
year but one. During that period, it fell below $6 an hour one time in 
1973.

                              {time}  2015

  Since 1981 the real value of the minimum wage has stayed below $6 an 
hour. President Clinton's proposed increase would restore hardworking 
minimum wage families' purchasing power to the level that it held for 
almost 6 years, almost 20 years, way back.
  It did hold, with the cost of living and inflation, for a 20-year 
period, but now 20 years has gone by since it was at the level of $6 an 
hour. We would be going to that level if we increased the present 
minimum wage in two stages, $5.15 and then, 35 cents one year and 50 
cents another year up to the point where it would be $6.15.
  People say that most of the minimum wage workers are young people in 
fast food joints and odd jobs after school, and it does not matter if 
they make the minimum wage, but the statistics and the studies show 
that 65 percent of minimum wage workers are adults 20 years or older. 
Sixty-five percent of the people who earn the minimum wage are adult 
workers 20 years or older.
  Some people say it does not help women and minorities because as we 
raise the minimum wage, employers lay off people, and a lot of women 
and minorities who would benefit from more jobs lose jobs as the 
minimum wage forces employers to cut the number of jobs.
  Well, women would be helped by increasing the minimum wage. Most 
minimum wage workers are women right now. Almost 1 million women are 
paid $5.15 an hour. An additional 5.8 are paid wages less than $6.14 an 
hour.
  Fifty-nine percent of all who would benefit from the increase are 
women. Nineteen percent of all hourly paid women would benefit from the 
increase. Seventy four percent of female low-wage workers are adults. 
Five million of the women are age 20 years or older. They are paid 
these minimum wages. Raising the minimum wage would provide a modest 
pay raise to the poorest working women, many of whom are raising 
children.
  Over 15 percent of those who would benefit from an increase are 
African American women, and 18 percent are Hispanic women. Together 
they number 3.8 million workers.
  The question was asked, is the minimum wage targeted to help poor 
people? As I said before, the myth is that as we raise the minimum 
wage, we have decreased the number of jobs because employers lay off 
people, or they cut the jobs in order to increase their profits.
  That is not true. According to a study by the Economic Policy 
Institute on the impact of the 1996 50-cent increase in the minimum 
wage, the benefits of the increase went primarily to low-income working 
families.

[[Page 6997]]

  The minimum wage can provide a foothold into the middle class. A 
family with two full-time workers who work all year round would earn 
$25,000 a year with a $6.15 minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage 
will help these workers to make up for lost ground due to inflation. It 
will help make work pay.
  Some other facts are, people always argue that the unskilled jobs and 
the disadvantaged workers are not going to be benefited, again because 
the number of those jobs will be decreased if we raise the minimum 
wage.
  But between September, 1996, and March of this year, 1999, the 
unemployment rate for high school dropouts has declined from 8.2 
percent to 6.1 percent. The unemployment rate for African Americans has 
dropped from 10.6 percent to 8.1 percent.
  The unemployment rate for Hispanic Americans has dropped from 8.3 
percent to 5.8 percent. The unemployment rate for teens has dropped 
from 15.7 percent to 14.3 percent. The unemployment rate for black 
teens has dropped from 33 percent to 31 percent.
  We would like to see all of these drops be more dramatic, but the 
fact is that the arguments that we do not help the poorest people or we 
do not help teenagers or we do not help minorities when we raise the 
minimum wage are totally discredited. No study has shown that this is 
true.
  When we talk about welfare recipients, a major problem of welfare 
recipients who entered the labor market so far is not their inability 
to find a job, but the fact that the earnings are very low. Increasing 
the minimum wage would increase the earnings of former welfare 
recipients and make it really worthwhile for them to be working instead 
of on welfare.
  Starting wages of welfare recipients in the job market average about 
$6.50 an hour, with significant fractions of recipients earning $5 and 
$6 an hour. Quarterly earnings of welfare recipients tend to be about 
$2,000 to $2,500 per quarter when they work, and just about $1,500 to 
$2,000 for high school dropouts.
  These low earning figures reflect the low wages as well as the high 
turnover rates in these jobs. Two problems, the low wages, and these 
jobs do not usually last for all year round. They are sporadic. There 
are periodic layoffs, and people do not earn money 50 weeks in a year.
  Virtually all research on minimum wage increases show little or no 
effects on the employment rates of young people. The vast majority of 
studies also show that minimum wage increases do reduce poverty rates, 
and no credible study has shown anything different, as I said before.
  Minimum wage workers benefit more and sooner if we raise the wages, 
as we did before, 50 cents per year. So the present proposals that are 
being floated by the Republicans, where some call for increases of only 
25 cents per year, do not propose to move fast enough with enough money 
to make it significant. It is not sharing with workers, when we have a 
$13 trillion economy, to talk about we will give them a minimum wage 
increase of only 25 cents per year.
  Minimum wage workers benefit more and they benefit sooner under the 
proposed Kennedy-Bonior proposal than under any of the Republican 
proposals. The Republican proposals would take money out of the minimum 
wage pockets.
  For example, in the first year of the Quinn bill, a full-time minimum 
wage worker earns nearly $200 less than under the Kennedy-Bonior bill. 
In the second year, the Republican bill gap rises to $571 less than 
they would make under the Kennedy-Bonior bill.
  There is a Shimkus proposal also, and the wage gap is worse under the 
Shimkus proposal. If the minimum wage increases by 25 cents in 1999, a 
full-time minimum wage worker earns $487 less in real terms than they 
would earn under the Kennedy-Bonior proposal.
  A second 25-cent increase in 2000 leaves workers even further behind, 
with a $951 gap between the Kennedy-Bonior proposal and the Shimkus 
proposal.
  In the first 2 years, the Kennedy-Bonior bill would benefit more 
workers than the Quinn proposal, which is 11.4 million workers compared 
to 7 million. The Quinn bill does nothing for over 4 million needy 
workers and their families. The Shimkus proposal helps even fewer low-
wage workers.
  As I said before, the President's proposal is a simple 50-cent 
increase on September 1, 1999, and a 50-cent increase on September 1, 
2000. As I said before, that would bring the minimum wage earner from 
the $10,000 a year up to $12,000 a year if they worked 50 weeks in a 
year, still much too low but an important improvement.
  Congress did raise the minimum wage by 50 cents in 1996 and 40 cents 
on September 1, 1997, and this time we propose to do it, through the 
President's proposal, a little better than that.
  The minimum wage is still low in historical terms. The value of the 
minimum wage reached its peak in 1968, when the value in real dollar 
terms was $7.49 in terms of dollars, dollar values in 1998. We were up 
that high, $7.49 in 1968.
  During President Reagan's 8 years in office, the real value of the 
minimum wage went down by about 25 percent. Today, even after the 90-
cent increase that President Clinton pushed through Congress, the 
minimum wage is only $5.15 an hour, and the new proposal would increase 
it by another $1 in two steps. This last increase in percentage terms 
is in line with previous ones that helped low wage workers without 
adversely affecting the economy. Both this proposal and the last one 
increased the minimum wage by about 20 percent.
  I could go on and on, but I do not want to talk more about facts 
related to the minimum wage. I think the point is made, that no studies 
have been brought forward to show that the economy is in any way harmed 
by an increase in the minimum wage. Workers certainly are not harmed by 
losing jobs. Unemployment now is much higher than it was when the 
minimum wage increase started 2 years ago.
  States have minimum wages. A few of them have minimum wages larger 
than the Federal Government minimum wage, but some States, of course, 
have no minimum wage, and often do not abide by the Federal minimum 
wage. They have a lot of jobs that do not pay even the minimum wage.
  I think Texas, if we want to look at the largest number of people 
earning the minimum wage, Texas has 211,000 in its State, and 4.2 
percent of the work force is earning minimum wage. They have another 
838,000 people who earn between $5.15 an hour and $6.14 cents an hour. 
That comes to 16.6 percent of the work force at very low wage levels.
  So we need to share the wealth. If we have $3 trillion, if we move 
from $3 trillion to $13 trillion on the stock market, there is no sound 
argument for not raising the minimum wage. Of all the ways to share the 
wealth, the best and easiest way, the most direct way, is to increase 
the dollars in the pockets of the workers. Working families need more 
money.
  So I appreciate the fact that we are not openly attacking workers, as 
we did in the 105th Congress. I appreciate the fact that the first bill 
on the agenda was not a bill to take away overtime, as we did in the 
105th Congress.
  I appreciate the fact that we are not any longer waging war on labor 
unions, to take away their ability to speak for their workers by having 
a so-called Paycheck Protection Act, which throttles the voices of 
unions. I appreciate the fact that there are no loud voices being 
raised to try to end Davis-Bacon for Federal contract jobs.
  But the truth is, in all of these areas there is still a guerilla war 
going on. The guerilla war is more subtle. The guerilla war is designed 
to hoodwink working families.
  Davis-Bacon is being attacked behind the scenes. Davis-Bacon is being 
again used as a scapegoat for not approving a massive school 
construction appropriation. They are saying that Davis-Bacon drives up 
the cost of school construction, despite the fact that there have been 
several scientific studies which show that Davis-Bacon does not drive 
up the cost.

[[Page 6998]]

  Mr. Peter Phillips has made several studies showing that if we remove 
Davis-Bacon, the cost may remain the same or go higher, but what 
happens is that the wages of the workers go down and the profits of the 
contractors go up. That is the only thing we accomplish when we remove 
Davis-Bacon from contracts.
  State Davis-Bacon laws, similar State Davis-Bacon prevailing wage 
laws have been changed in certain Midwestern States. They have seen 
that it does not lower the cost of school construction, it only raises 
the profits of contractors. So Davis-Bacon should not be an issue.
  However, in the circles of Congress there is still talk of blocking 
any appropriation for school construction because of Davis-Bacon, or 
holding school construction appropriations hostage by saying that we 
will do it only if you get rid of Davis-Bacon.
  I understand the Committee on Ways and Means has made some steps 
forward in terms of the Democratic leadership over there. The ranking 
Democrat on the Committee on Ways and Means recently announced in a 
session of the Congressional Black Caucus that he would certainly 
support the continuation of Davis-Bacon on the school construction bill 
proposed through Committee on Ways and Means.
  That is the President's proposal that we borrow $25 billion, and the 
States and local governments would be helped by the Federal Government, 
by the Federal Government paying the interest through a tax credit 
vehicle on the $25 billion for school construction.
  So I hope that the guerilla warfare will cease. We had some problems 
recently in the subcommittee on Workforce Protections, my subcommittee 
where I serve as the ranking Democrat. We had a problem with an attempt 
to get rid of bonuses as part of the computation of the rate of pay for 
a worker.
  If we remove the bonuses, then the hourly rate of the worker goes 
down, and we can have the worker work overtime and he gets less money 
if the bonus is not computed as part of his hourly pay. That is what we 
call a bushwacking, an ambush of the working families, to try to take 
away their overtime through a much less visible approach.

                              {time}  2030

  H.R. 1 was a highly visible direct assault by mandating, it called 
for mandating the use of comp time instead of cash payments for 
overtime. So we would like to see working families not have to fight so 
hard to get their share of the wealth.
  I would like to even go further and say that the problem of Social 
Security, problem of health care, we should look at taxing unearned 
income. Unearned income may be the source of the solution to the Social 
Security problem. If we would put a Social Security tax, as I am 
proposing, on unearned income, we would guarantee Social Security for 
an infinite number of years in the future.
  At the same time, we could lift the tax off the backs of the workers. 
Working families have had the biggest tax increase over the last two 
decades through the payroll tax. Most people do not realize that 
because they do not look at taxes in that way. But the payroll tax 
increase has been not a progressive tax, but a regressive tax, and 
fallen on the backs of wage earners. At the same time, we have had this 
tremendous increase in wealth for the people who have unearned income.
  I did not invent these two terms. These are economic terms that have 
been around for a long time. Earned income is the income of working 
people, the people who earn wages. Those dollars are called earned 
income. Investments and income from rent and other sources are called 
unearned income.
  I do not know why we discriminate against earned income and all the 
taxes are just on earned income. Only 11 percent of unearned income is 
taxed. We ought to take a look at a tax reduction policy for working 
families. That is another issue that should be considered.
  But, first of all and foremost, I think that the current 
consideration is the need for a bipartisan approach to the passage of a 
meaningful increase in the minimum wage, a meaningful increase. We do 
not want a bipartisan increase. The bipartisanism forces us to 
sacrifice the reality of it.
  The reality is that no less than $1 over a 2-year period is 
acceptable. We need so much more than that. Consider the $13 trillion 
versus the $3 trillion, and my colleagues will see the kind of 
magnitude that our wealth has increased by.
  No less should happen in terms of the various programs that we, as 
the policymakers here in Congress, approve for working families. We 
need to help working families through health care. We need to help 
working families by providing health care plans and health care systems 
that take care of everybody.
  We need to help working families by increasing Federal aid to 
education, first of all building more schools and better schools and 
repairing schools and modernizing schools and equipping schools with 
the technology that they need.
  Finally, we need to help working families first of all, most 
immediately and most directly, by passing immediately an increase in 
the minimum wage.

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