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Congressman George Miller:

September 28, 2006 phone interview:

Audio, Text

September 28, 2006 Floor speech:

Video, Text

September 27, 2006 Floor speech:

Video, Text

August 8, 2006 NPR interview:

Audio, Text

July 2006 floor speeches:

Video 1, Text 1;Video 2, Text 2.

June 26, 2006 interview on the minimum wage and the estate tax:

Video, Text

Special order speech:

Video, Text

Floor speech on the GOP's money mismanagement:

Video, Text

 

Kentuckians Tell House Democrats About Need for Minimum Wage Hike:

Kentucky lawmakers and community and labor leaders attended a roundtable discussion hosted by House Democrats on July 14, where a local single mother spoke about her struggle to make ends meet on a minimum wage.

 

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For the first time since 1996, Congress could have the chance to vote to increase the minimum wage. Democrats value an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, and have been trying for several years to increase the minimum wage.

June-July: House Republicans voted five times to block a minimum wage increase vote.

 

June 13: Democrats succeeded in getting an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over two years in the FY07 Labor Health and Human Services appropriations bill. That measure, sponsored by Rep. Steny Hoyer, was based on the minimum wage bill proposed by Rep. George Miller. (more) The Republican House leadership has still not allowed a vote on this bill because of the minimum wage measure included in it.

 

June 14: House Democrats urged the Rules Committee to protect Hoyer's minimum wage amendment, so the House could vote on giving American workers a much-needed raise.

June 19: Senator Kennedy offered a similar amendment in the Senate to the Defense Authorization Bill. The proposal won votes from a majority of the Senate, 52 Senators, but fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage under a procedural agreement.

 

June 20: "I've been in this business for 25 years and I've never voted for an increase in the minimum wage," House Majority Leader Boehner said. "I'm opposed to it and I think a vast majority of our Conference is opposed to it."

 

June 22: In a blow to America's working families, Republicans pushed to give as much as one trillion dollars to less than one percent of the wealthiest Americans by rolling back the federal estate tax. (While the minimum wage has not increased since 1997, see what has. Note: This chart is not adjusted for inflation.)

 

July 12: A vote showed the growing bi-partisan support for a minimum wage increase. The House passed, 260-159, a motion sponsored by Rep. George Miller to instruct congressional negotiators to increase to $7.25 the minimum wage paid to workers who receive federal job training assistance. Every House Democrat and 64 Republicans supported the measure. The vote was non-binding, but it was a successful attempt by Democrats to demonstrate that a minimum wage increase has the support of a majority in the House. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership still would not allow a real vote on a real wage hike.

 

July 29: House Republicans chose to play political games by passing a minimum wage increase that stood little chance of passage in the U.S. Senate -- and was, in fact, killed in the Senate on August 3. Instead of a clean up-or-down House vote on the minimum wage, the Republican-passed bill would also have given massive tax breaks to the wealthiest 8,200 estates. Unlike a Democratic measure, the GOP measure would have helped 1.8 million fewer minimum wage workers, could have lead to wage cuts for hundreds of thousands -- or even millions -- of tipped workers such as waiters, and would not have extended the minimum wage to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. territory where worker exploitation is widespread.