Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4486, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015; and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4487, Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding time to debate the rule.

Pop quiz. There is a piece of legislation that will give more than 25 million Americans a pay raise, bring nearly 1 million Americans out of poverty, and lower total food stamp aid by $4.6 billion.

What do you do? What do you do? If you are the House Republican majority, you schedule a vote for H.R. 627, the National Park Service 100th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act, and not legislation that accomplishes the items I just mentioned by raising the minimum wage.

What is it going to take for my Republican colleagues to do something that will actually help the economy? They came into the majority after the 2010 midterm elections saying that priorities one, two, and three were jobs, jobs, jobs. But this body hasn't seen anything substantive that would show that to be the truth.

Since 2011, the House Republicans forced the shutdown of the government, threatened the full faith and credit of the United States, and developed an obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act. They have done nothing to help the American people.

No American working full-time should live in poverty. Raising the minimum wage will increase the take-home pay for more than 28 million Americans. It will add $35 billion to the economy and higher wages through 2016. It will create 85,000 new jobs as a result of the increased economic activity.

But make no mistake. Those statistics are not likely to change their minds. No facts likely will because their refusal to give millions of Americans a raise is not about facts or economics; it is about keeping their sugar donors happy--sugar donors like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.

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Mr. TAKANO. And while these sugar donors are throwing 10s of millions of dollars away on campaign ads in select toss-up districts, regular, hardworking Americans are struggling just to keep their heads above water.

For our country to move forward and continue to grow, we must do more for those who need help. President Franklin Roosevelt once said:

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

To provide enough, we must raise the minimum wage.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can bring the minimum wage bill to the floor and get to work growing our economy and helping working families.

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