[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15566-15568]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 TRIBUTE TO THOMAS J. MANTON AND ARGUMENT FOR RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized for 5 minutes.


                      Tribute to Thomas J. Manton

  Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I would like to add my sentiments to the 
words that have been spoken already. I associate myself with the 
remarks that have been made about Tom Manton.
  Tom Manton was a political leader in an adjacent county, the Borough 
of Queens. In the Borough of Brooklyn we had what we call a first-rate 
political machine, and in view of the fact we have been discussing 
power-sharing and the Voting Rights Act, I remember dramatically seeing 
the difference between Brooklyn and Queens.
  As a leader in Queens, Tom Manton believed in power-sharing. 
Minorities did not have to fight to get what they

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deserved in Queens. Harmony was not established only after a big battle 
was waged and the spoils were settled. In Brooklyn we had to battle for 
everything. We had to fight all the way.
  Tom Manton was a political boss. He was head of a machine. But he 
gave new meaning to the word machine and being a boss. A conciliator, a 
mediator, a guy who made things happen as he took this diverse, rapidly 
growing borough, rapidly growing in terms of diverse population, he 
wove it altogether without bitter fights and without leaving a lot of 
blood in the aisles.
  So I take my hat off to Tom Manton and the kind of example he made. I 
can add very little to what my colleagues have already said.


                 Argument for Raising the Minimum Wage

  Madam Speaker, I wanted to speak tonight about a subject we have been 
talking about for quite a while here, and that is raising the minimum 
wage.
  I also know that almost nothing new can be said about the need for an 
increase in the minimum wage. My colleagues have been on the floor for 
the last 2 weeks hammering away at the subject. The facts surrounding 
this gross injustice have been recited again and again.
  I am a cosponsor of a simple legislative vehicle which will raise the 
minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.15 an hour. Our ranking member of the 
Education and the Workforce Committee, George Miller, has already used 
every known legislative and publicity maneuver known to man to confront 
the majority Republicans with a need to place this issue on the floor 
for a vote. The 30-something Group has done a fantastic job with charts 
and graphs, making it crystal clear how ridiculous it is that we have 
not raised the minimum wage since 1997. I can't add much to that.
  Madam Speaker, I want to address this subject from a different 
perspective. I want to talk about the fact that the people earning 
minimum wage at the very bottom are the people that we need in this 
society. We need everybody to be in a position where they can rise in 
this society, and a decent income for a family is the beginning of the 
process of moving toward the middle class.
  ``Middle-class'' covers a whole lot of things, but I am going to 
oversimplify the matter and say it is generally felt what makes the 
world go around economically and politically is a middle class. Every 
nation needs a middle class.
  There has been a lot of talk about the fact that in China in the next 
10 years, 25 percent of its population will be middle class. What is 25 
percent of China's population of 1.2 billion? It is 300 million people 
that will be in the Chinese middle class. About the same number of 
people will move into the middle class in India in 10 years, 300 
million.
  Now, what is the population of the United States? Our total 
population is 300 million. If we are going to compete with China and 
India, the middle class is a competitive class. That is the educated 
class. That is the people that have technical proficiency to compete 
with us in the high-tech area. They are doing it and will do more of 
it. In addition to China and India, you have Russia and a number of 
other places in Europe that will have middle-class folks to be in that 
competitive arena.
  We need every American to be competitive. We have only got 300 
million. Our goal should be to make every American a part of the middle 
class, because middle class, as I said before, means the productive 
class, the people who can make a contribution toward our society, who 
can take care of themselves and help take care of various functions in 
our society.
  At every level we need excellence, better educated people. I am 
talking about from the guy who pours the concrete to the engineer who 
designs the tunnels and bridges. We need competence, we need people who 
are constantly raising the level and moving toward excellence.
  Blunders in our society internally may destroy us faster than any 
outside enemy, blunders by people who are not competent, blunders 
because we run out of talent, because we run out of people who know 
what they are doing, or we run out of a competitive situation where 
there are enough people in a given area to be able to chastise, 
examine, criticize and keep other people in line. We had such a major 
blunder in the building of the levees in New Orleans.
  Madam Speaker, I will submit an article for the Record from the New 
York Times by Paul Krugman entitled ``Black and Blue,'' which is in 
regards to the minimum wage.

                [From the New York Times, July 24, 2006]

                             Black and Blue

                           (By Paul Krugman)

       According to the White House transcript, here's how it went 
     last week, when President Bush addressed the N.A.A.C.P. for 
     the first time:
       THE PRESIDENT: ``I understand that many African-Americans 
     distrust my political party.''
       AUDIENCE: ``Yes! (Applause.)''
       But Mr. Bush didn't talk about why African-Americans don't 
     trust his party, and black districts are always blue on 
     election maps. So let me fill in the blanks.
       First, G.O.P. policies consistently help those who are 
     already doing extremely well, not those lagging behind--a 
     group that includes the vast majority of African-Americans. 
     And both the relative and absolute economic status of blacks, 
     after improving substantially during the Clinton years, have 
     worsened since 2000.
       The G.O.P. obsession with helping the haves and have-mores, 
     and lack of concern for everyone else, was evident even in 
     Mr. Bush's speech to the N.A.A.C.P. Mr. Bush never mentioned, 
     wages, which have been falling behind inflation for most 
     workers. And he certainly didn't mention the minimum wage, 
     which disproportionately affects African-American workers, 
     and which he has allowed to fall to its lowest real level 
     since 1955.
       Mr. Bush also never used the word ``poverty,'' a condition 
     that afflicts almost one in four blacks.
       But he found time to call for repeal of the estate tax, 
     even though African-Americans are more than a thousand times 
     as likely to live below the poverty line as they are to be 
     rich enough to leave a taxable estate.
       Economic issues alone, then, partially explain African-
     American disdain for the G.O.P.
       But even more important is the way Republicans win 
     elections.
       The problem with policies that favor the economic elite is 
     that by themselves they're not a winning electoral strategy, 
     because there aren't enough elite voters. So how did the 
     Republicans rise to their current position of political 
     dominance? It's hard to deny that barely concealed appeals to 
     racism, which drove a wedge between blacks and relatively 
     poor whites who share the same economic interests, played a 
     crucial role.
       Don't forget that in 1980, the sainted Ronald Reagan began 
     his presidential campaign with a speech on states' rights in 
     Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were 
     murdered in 1964.
       These days the racist appeals have been toned down; Trent 
     Lott was demoted, though not drummed out of the party, when 
     he declared that if Strom Thurmond's segregationist 
     presidential campaign had succeeded ``we wouldn't have had 
     all these problems.'' Meanwhile, the G.O.P. has found other 
     ways to, obscure its economic elitism. The Bush 
     administration has proved utterly incompetent in fighting 
     terrorists, but it has skillfully exploited the terrorist 
     threat for domestic political gain. And there are also the 
     ``values'' issues: abortion, stem cells, gay marriage.
       But the nasty racial roots of the G.O.P.'s triumph live on 
     in public policy and election strategy.
       A revelatory article in yesterday's Boston Globe described 
     how the Bush administration has politicized the Justice 
     Department's civil rights division, ``filling the permanent 
     ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials 
     but little experience in civil rights.''
       Not surprisingly, there has been a shift in priorities: 
     ``The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment 
     cases involving systematic discrimination against African-
     Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against 
     whites and religious discrimination against Christians.''
       Above all, there's the continuing effort of the G.O.P. to 
     suppress black voting.
       The Supreme Court probably wouldn't have been able to put 
     Mr. Bush in the White House in 2000 if the administration of 
     his brother, the governor of Florida, hadn't misidentified 
     large numbers of African-Americans as felons ineligible to 
     vote. In 2004, Ohio's Republican secretary of state tried to 
     impose a ludicrous rule on the paper weight of voter 
     registration applications; last year, Georgia Republicans 
     tried to impose an onerous ``voter ID'' rule. In each case, 
     the obvious intent was to disenfranchise blacks.
       And if the Republicans hold on to the House this fall, it 
     will probably only be because of a redistricting plan in 
     Texas that a panel of Justice Department lawyers unanimously 
     concluded violated the Voting Rights

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     Act--only to be overruled by their politically appointed 
     superiors.
       So yes, African-Americans distrust Mr. Bush's party--with 
     good reason.

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