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Providing for Consideration of H.R. American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 26, 2021
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Government Operations Health and Health Care Economy and Fiscal

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, we have a choice tonight. Our American children are hungry, the recovery is stalling, and a million new people file for unemployment every week.

We can do our jobs, pass a national vaccination plan, safely reopen our schools, send relief checks to those in need, support the unemployed, and protect American jobs. Or we can let them fend for themselves and slowly scratch their way back to health at great human cost.

I choose relief, recovery, and progress.

Madam Speaker, my first job: In 1966, $1.25 an hour, minimum wage.

Sixteen times this Congress has chosen to increase the minimum wage, and every time there was a CBO score or a chamber of commerce or a conservative economist who talked about the shrinkage of low-wage jobs. But if we were persuaded by this job-loss mirage, we would never raise the minimum wage. And I refuse to believe that this is American exceptionalism.

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