[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11193]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         MINIMUM WAGE AMENDMENT

  (Mr. MORAN of Virginia asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Ladies and gentlemen, the American people want 
a new direction. And Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House Appropriations 
Committee finally acted on something that the House Republican 
leadership has refused to address for over a decade.
  Finally, yesterday, the full Appropriations Committee passed the 
amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill 
that will very gradually increase the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour 
to $7.25. Do you know that those who were working at the minimum wage 
in 1968, if today they were getting a comparable compensation, it would 
be over $9 an hour.
  I commend the Appropriations Committee for passing this in a 
bipartisan fashion, because expanding economic opportunity for over 7 
million hard-working wage earners, plus another approximately 9 million 
members of their family should not be a partisan issue.
  Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has said they do not intend 
to allow us to vote on the House floor on this critical issue. Today's 
minimum wage is at its lowest level in 50 years. Let's change that for 
America's hardest working families.

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