Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007
FAIR MINIMUM WAGE ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - January 10, 2007)
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am extraordinarily happy to rise in support of this legislation. This legislation is very late in coming to this floor as a free-standing bill. It is, however, never too late to do the right thing.
This legislation, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, is long overdue. I believe it will pass this House today with broad bipartisan support, as the 9/11 bill did yesterday, making our country safer.
At long last, Mr. Speaker, this House is just hours away from finally passing a clean increase in the Federal minimum wage and sending this legislation to the Senate, where we devoutly hope the Members of the other body will do the same without delay.
H.R. 2 is the second key piece of legislation in the new Democratic majority's 100-hours agenda, and we are following through on our pledge to the American people to immediately address these critical issues.
There is probably not a Member of this House who fails to appreciate that an American who works full time at today's minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is essentially living in poverty. That is not right, Mr. Speaker. That worker, if he or she works 40 hours per week for 52 weeks, makes roughly $10,700 per year. If that mom has a child or that father has a wife and a child, they are essentially living on $6,000 less than we determine to be poverty in America.
Passing this legislation today, which will raise the minimum wage by $2.10 per hour to $7.25 in three steps over the next 2 years, is simply a matter of doing what is right, what is just and what is fair.
Frankly, Mr. Speaker, if it were up to me, I would do $7.25 an hour now. But we are going to phase this in so that small businesses and others can accommodate this raise. But that will mean, Mr. Speaker, that those on the minimum wage will still have to wait.
It has been 9 years and 4 months since the last increase in the Federal minimum wage took effect, and that was under President Clinton. This represents the longest period without an increase since Congress established the minimum wage in 1938, since Congress said we are going to have a minimum in the United States that we will pay people and respect people who work to make themselves, their families and their country better.
At $5.15 today, the minimum wage level is at its lowest level, adjusted for inflation, in over 50 years, half a century. In fact, Mr. Speaker, if the minimum wage had been adjusted by a cost of living increase on an annual basis since 1968, a minimum wage worker would not be making $5.15, would not be making $7.25, but would be making $9.05. So, effectively, this raise will be $1.85 less than they would be making if it had been raised on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, just since 2000, the cost of health insurance, gasoline, home heating, attending college, food and other related expenses have all increased, in fact, for an average family, about $5,000 a year in that period of time. Yet the minimum wage worker has not received any raise.
This legislation will benefit literally millions of Americans. An estimated 5.6 million Americans who make less than $7.25 per hour will directly benefit from this increase. An estimated additional 7.3 million Americans, including family members of those making less than $7.25, will indirectly benefit.
Now there are those who will claim this legislation will hurt small business and the economy. I reject that. I believe history shows that that is not the case. In fact, when we raised it in 1997, the economy was having one of its most successful periods of time, which continued long past the adoption of the minimum wage. In fact, according to one recent study, small business employment grew more in States with a higher minimum wage between 1997 and 2003 than in Federal minimum wage States. In other words, in those States that were paying above the $5.15 an hour, their economies grew more and they created more jobs than did those States which had frozen their minimum wage at the Federal minimum wage.
In fact, Lee Scott, the chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, has stated that the current minimum wage ``is out of date with the times. We can see firsthand at Wal-Mart how many of our customers are struggling to get by. Our customers simply don't have the money to buy basic necessities between paychecks.'
Now, what is Wal-Mart all about? Wal-Mart is about bringing prices down. It is very controversial how they do it, but the fact is they know their consumers cannot buy even discounted necessities of life on the minimum wage.
Mr. Speaker, you and I know that in the richest Nation on the face of the Earth, that is wrong.
In a bipartisan way, and I haven't counted the Republican votes, but we are going to get a lot of Republican votes from those who are saying to the American people, as we are, we agree with you. Because 89 percent of the American people, when questioned, believe the minimum wage ought to be raised. Eighty-nine percent of the American people. And, Mr. Speaker, 83 percent of small businesses say this will not adversely affect them.
Mr. Speaker, it is time to pass this legislation. Sixty-four House Republicans joined all Democrats here last July in voting for a $7.25 per hour wage under the vocational education bill.
There is simply no reason, I suggest to you, not to support this legislation. In the United States of America, the richest country on the face of the Earth, you should not be relegated to poverty if you work hard and play by the rules.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this reasonable bipartisan legislation. The President of the United States has indicated that he will sign a minimum wage increase. There may be some changes that he wants, but he has recognized, as we will recognize today, that it is long past the time when we need to pay people and give them the dignity that their work demands and has earned.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), who has been the leader on this issue in the House of Representatives and one of the leaders in the country and who chairs the Education and Labor Committee.
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