[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5663]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           RAISE THE WAGE ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this is an 
important and significant week here in the Hall of the people's House 
because, this week, we are going to be introducing the Raise the Wage 
Act.
  This argument has been going on for quite some time now; yet, 
frustratingly, despite all the time and energy that has been focused on 
this issue, the Federal minimum wage still has not been raised in 
almost a decade.
  Depending on what measure of inflation you use, the minimum wage in 
real dollars is either at its lowest level in 50 years or its lowest 
level in 70 years. Either way is bad for American workers.
  I want to particularly combat the perception some have that all 
minimum wage workers are teenagers. Actually, the average age of a 
minimum wage worker is 33 years old.
  Any time you go into the local McDonald's or Burger King in my 
neighborhood, you can see in person that we are dealing with not just 
teen workers, but many who are in their thirties, forties, fifties, and 
many seniors who need to work in order to supplement their income.
  I also want to highlight this important fact: 18.7 million children--
almost 19 million children--are supported by parents who work full time 
at minimum wage jobs.
  We are not talking about a government handout. We are not talking 
about helping those who aren't attempting to help themselves. We are 
talking about making sure a fair day's work actually pays. We are 
talking about rewarding hard-working Americans.
  By the way, if you don't work a minimum wage job--you are just an 
ordinary taxpayer--you, too, would benefit from increasing the minimum 
wage.
  Here is why. We have, right now in America, the highest percentage of 
minimum wage workers who are currently getting government assistance--
food stamps, Medicaid, and other sorts of programs--because, despite 
working full time, they make so little, they qualify for government 
assistance.
  By raising their wage, we would decrease the poverty rate and 
decrease the amount of money needed to be spent on public assistance 
programs.
  Mr. Speaker, this is an issue about fairness; it is an issue about 
justice, but it is also an issue about what kind of an America we 
believe in, one that rewards hard work, one that rewards those who are 
going to work every day and working for a living, or one that just says 
the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent can continue to grow at the 
greatest rate of income in American history, while the other 70 percent 
of Americans are losing their share of income. That is wrong.
  We believe in an America in which those who work hard and play by the 
rules should benefit. One way of ensuring this will happen is raising 
the minimum wage now.

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