Raise the Minimum Wage

Floor Speech

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, an increase in the minimum wage is good for jobs. Minimum wage workers are adults who support families, and exorbitant CEO pay actually has been proven to hurt the performance of companies. Three new studies confirm these three points, and I would like to elaborate a little bit.

Minimum wage workers are older than they used to be. Their average age is 35 years old, and 88 percent are at least 20 years old. Most are women. Women make up 48 percent of the workforce; yet 55 percent of the would-be beneficiaries of an increase to the minimum wage are women.

Raising the minimum wage will not cost jobs. That is a myth. Here are the facts: 13 States raised the minimum wage in 2014, and all but one have seen employment gains. Now, that doesn't prove causation, but it does prove that this claim that minimum wage hurts jobs is false.

It is also the case that we are often told that high pay for CEOs is just a reward and that it incentivizes them to work hard. High CEO pay does not increase profitability.

In fact, in June, a study was published that looked at the long-term performance of 1,500 companies. That is a lot of data. They are finding that higher, exorbitant CEO pay hurts companies. Forbes says, ``How could this be? In a word, overconfidence.''

The bottom line is that the myths that we live by are not true. Let's raise the wage and get some accountability at the executive level.

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